Subject to Change: Fiore arc
by JadeEye
Summary: It's been awhile, but the continuation of STC is under way. This fic is still writen by EightofSwords, I'm just posting it up for her. If you leave reviews, I'll make sure she gets them. Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This is sort of a bridge between the first "season" of STC and the next. Kind of a lot of stuff happens, and kind of nothing at all happens. Basically, this three-part introduction plants the seeds of the change that will sprout in the next season. It's based on the R movie, Promise of the Rose. If you didn't like that movie (as I know a lot of people didn't, including Takeuchi-sama herself), please read this anyway; it moves a lot of things around. (P.S. I'm going to try to post this at the end of the original STC just so that anyone who has an alert for this story notices this intro's existence. I was afraid that if I posted it as a brand-new story, a lot of people might not notice it. By the way, I would suggest rereading the last couple chapters of STC Season 1 before starting this. If you don't, then just remember please that Darien was blinded and Serena severely scarred in the fiasco on prom night.)

Hi this is JadeEye! I know Eight hasn't updated her story but she has a really good reason. Her dad freaked and hasn't allowed her to post any more stories up, so I have decided to post them for her. Because none of us can really live without her story. I just have to say that updates on S_ubject to Change_ may not be very frequent because we just started our last year at IB and it is alot of hard work, but we'll try to keep the chapters coming. Please reread _Subject to Change _in order to really get what's happening.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Part One: Post-Beryl

L

_When you receive you must give._

This is the first lesson taught to the children of the Makaiju. It permeates every corner of their lives. The Makaiju gives them life, and all their lives, they depend on it to give them the energy to survive. In return, they give it their energy. It is a perfect example of the cycle of life – energy being given, being taken, being received. It was used as such an example in classrooms all across the galaxy before the Senshi Wars.

When the Senshi Wars erupted, the Makaiju retreated into the deep wastes of space. Fear and worry weakened its strength. It did not have the energy to care for all of its children. Many died. Grief tainted the Makaiju's strength. Resentment grew within it for the Senshi who had killed its children.

With less children to return their energy to it, the Makaiju had less energy to give to the children who did survive. Some left, some hoping to find salvation for their mother, others seeking only for their own salvation.

Fiore was one of the Makaiju's children that left. He was young by any species' standards, and weak from lack of energy.

So deeply did he retreat into himself to conserve his energy that he did not even realize he had arrived on a planet until some hours had passed after his landing. There was noise around him, a precipitation, and a creature his own size leaning over him with a shield to ward the precipitation away.

That boy had energy. Even as young and inexperienced as he was, Fiore could smell it seeping out of the boy's pores like perspiration. It strengthened him, and he followed the boy into a shelter from the precipitation.

Neither the boy nor the other beings like him that they passed seemed to recognize his power. Fiore wondered what sort of planet this was where a being with so much power was not imprisoned or monarch.

When the boy spoke to him, he understood it. And his confusion increased. Senshi and ecopaths were blessed with the ability to be understood and understand in any language. This boy must be one or the other. Why, then, was he alone in this spare chamber in this place full of still and moaning beings? Were they siphoning off his energy to heal, as Fiore was?

Fiore could not have judged how much time passed while he stayed with the boy – the Darien. He was too absorbed wrestling and playing with Darien to keep proper track of the planet's star cycles. How strange and how wonderful it was to have the energy to move and play, much less someone to play with!

L

A Day in the Life of Serena and Darien: Post-Beryl

9:47.

Serena dreamed that she was on a swing – one of those fun bench swings, the kind you sit on and close yoru eyes and imagine your soulmate is sitting next to you, whoever that soulmate is. At that moment, she was pretty sure was she picturing that hot newscaster from Channel Ten.

Then the tugging started – someone was yanking on one corner of the bench and throwing the slow, peaceful swoops off balance, like a boat on choppy waves. She gripped the bench tightly with one hand and reached for Mr. Newscaster's with the other.

But Mr. Newscaster had disappeared, and fog was leaking in everywhere. She was swinging on that swing all alone in the fog, except for she heard coughing, hacking somewhere in all that fog. And the swing was still being yanked, yanked in the direction of the coughing. The coughing was growing closer and closer –

A tremendous yank, more powerful than any of the others, toppled her off the bench swing. She tumbled, falling, falling, falling, screaming as the coughing grew louder and closer –

And then she woke up.

She blinked up at her ceiling, panting.

The tugging hadn't stopped. This didn't surprise her. She was quite used to it by now. In fact, she was surprised her dream self never realized what the tugging was.

That is to say, Darien. Pulling on the rope to wake her up.

She stretched one arm and gripped the rope tightly with the other, sending annoyance down it. Back, she received the phantom aroma of coffee and and sound conversing voices.

"Oh, no!" Serena jumped out of bed and began snatching up clothes. She and Darien were watching Buji today while his mom had a doctor's appointment – and they were supposed to meet her at the arcade at ten! "I'm LAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!!!!!"

Ikuko looked up from the laudry she was folding on the kitchen table as she heard Serena's shout, the slam of the bathroom door, and the shower hissing to life. "Ah, Kenji," she sighed, her eyes bright.

"I never thought I'd miss that sound," agreed Kenji, his face soft. Then he grumbled a little, looking at his watch. "Is she going to see That Boy again?"

Serena avoided looking at the mirror as she dressed. The silver scars from the battle weeks ago wound around her body like silver snakes, and looking at them always made her stomach flip. She yanked on a long-sleeved shirt and jeans shorts, then hurriedly yanked a brush through her wet and very, very long hair.

"Argh!" Tangles! She'd forgotten conditioner!

"Oh, forget it!" She jerked out her Luna Pen. "Luna Pen, make me look exactly the same – only with untangled, dry hair!"

Waiting only long enough to check the result – satisfactory – in the mirror, Serena barreled out of the bathroom, into her room, down the stairs, and out the door. "BYE!"

"TELL THAT BOY I'VE GOT MY EYES ON HIM!" Kenji bellowed after her.

"Kenji!" Ikuko whapped him over the head with a spatula. "He's blind! You can't tell him you've got your eyes on him! How insensitive!"

"Fine, fine," grumbled Kenji. "I have my gun's sights set on him, then."

"Kenji Tsukino!" WHAP!

L

10:13 a.m.

"You're late, nee-chan." Buji sat on a stool with his nose in the air and his arms crossed over his chest.

"Sorry?" Serena apologized hopefully, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. She looked up – then burst out laughing.

"What?" demanded Buji.

Serena shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes. Buji sat right next to Darien – who was sitting in the exact same position: his arms crossed over his chest, his chin imperiously in the air. Because he couldn't see, Darien hadn't noticed it – but it was so cute to see the two of them acting so alike!

"She must have had Fruit Loops for breakfast," Darien told Buji, who grinned. "Just ignore her."

"Now, now, no ignoring Usa-chan." Motoki arrived, patting Serena on the head. "You hungry?"

"Yeeeeeeees." Serena looked pleadingly up at Motoki.

He laughed. "Lita, Serena's hungry!"

The tall brunette appeared with a plate on her arm. "Who could have seen that coming?" she said sardonically, but it was with a smile. She set the plate down in front of Serena. "Hey, girl."

"Hi, Lita," Serena greeted in return and dug into the scrambled eggs and French toast Lita had brought.

Lita glanced at Buji and Darien. "Well, if it isn't the respresentatives from Why To Wait Until After Marriage."

"Your use of a joke on me that I already used on Serena merely draws attention to your pitiful lack of creativity, Kino," replied Darien.

Buji looked back and forth between both of them. "Nee-chan." He leaned over to whisper in her ear behind a cupped hand. "What are they talking about?"

"Nothing, nothing!" Motoki sweatdropped, overhearing, and handed Buji some tokens. "Here, why don't you go play until Serena's done?"

"Too late!" Serena set down her fork triumphantly. "Bet I can beat you at Mortal Kombat, Buji!"

"You wish!"

They each scrambled down off their stools and tore towards the game, squabbling over who got the red joystick.

"Wow." Motoki looked at Darien. "Are you sure you can handle spending the whole day with BOTH of them?"

"Probably not." Darien set down his coffee. "Which is why my will is written and waiting on my kitchen counter. Make sure it's executed faithfully, Toki. Asanuma gets _nothing_."

Motoki chuckled. "That's so mean, Dare."

"Well, he can have my toilet plunger," Darien decided. He took a bite of his cinnamon roll, which was now cold, just the way he liked it. "Do you guys know any good movies that are playing? Ones I could take those two, I mean."

"That depends," Lita said. "Are you looking for something that won't bore you out of your mind, won't be too inappropriate for Buji, but won't be too scary for Serena?"

"Surprisingly, Kino, you've summed it up pretty neatly."

"Don't thank me yet." Lita showed her teeth. "There are NO movies out like that."

"None?" Darien echoed. "Well, that sucks."

"Why don't you buy some kites and go to the park?" Motoki suggested. "That's what Lizzie used to do with the kids she baby-sat."

"Yeah, but it's almost ninety degrees outside." Darien took a bite of his cinnamon roll.

"So what?" said Motoki. "You afraid of a little manly sweat?"

"No, wait, he's right, Toki," said Lita slowly. She nudged him in the ribs. "Remember what Serena's wearing."

Motoki's hazel eyes flicked over to the rowdy pair at the Mortal Kombet game. His pupils contracted in realization. "Oh."

"Long sleeves again?" asked Darien quietly.

Motoki nodded, then rembered Darien couldn't see it. "Yes."

Darien's jaw tightened. "I thought so." He stabbed his roll with the fork.

"Have the scars faded at all?" Motoki asked.

"I haven't seen them since she got out of the hospital." Lita shook her head, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "She always keeps them hidden under sleeves. If the ones on her face are anything to go by, though…"

"They haven't healed at all." Motoki unwrapped a tube of tokens. He glanced at Darien. "Does she talk to you about them at all?"

Darien shook his head, pressing his fork down on his cinnamon roll and feeling it smush beneath the metal. "Not really. She's…ashamed of them, I think." His head lifted, and his golden eyes were on them. "Are they that noticeable?"

"They're long and bright silver," Lita said bluntly. "It looks like there's a spiderweb on the lower half of her face. The ones on her body, last time I saw them, were thicker and bumpier than the ones on her face."

Darien smushed more of his cinnamon roll, lips compressed.

In the thoughtful silence that swallowed them, they heard an "ARGH!" of frustration, the triumphant laughter.

"Serena won," said Motoki, his frown turning to a smile. "She must have been practicing."

L

11:26.

"Onee-chan!"

Buji's gasp whipped Serena's head around and sent her pulse racing. Her hand flew to her chest for her brooch as she stepped toward him – then clenched empty air. The familiar sense of loss snapped at her like a hungry wolf.

"What is it?" asked Darien tensely; she saw his hand inside his pocket – preparing to withdraw a rose, no doubt.

"They have Senshi kites!" Buji exclaimed.

Serena and Darien both wilted.

"That's all?" said Serena faintly. "I thought you'd found a dead body or something."

"Better," breathed Buji, enraptured, wrestling the kites off the store shelf – which was slightly too high for him. Serena reached over and helped him. "Look, this one has Tuxedo Mask!" He laughed.

Serena glanced at Darien, poking him slyly in the ribs. "Is he your favorite?" she asked Buji.

The little boy grinned widely. "Are you crazy? He throws weenie roses! Sailor Moon is way cooler!"

Serena exploded in laughter. "That's – so – mean," she gasped out between giggles.

"Clearly you haven't seen Tuxedo Mask use his cane knife," Darien informed Buji.

Buji snorted. "Big deal, a cane. The Senshi use magic weapons!" His eyes glittered. "I want to be just like them someday!"

"You want to wear a short skirt and high heels?" Darien raised his eyebrows.

Buji made a smothered sound, flushing. "NO!"

"Case closed." Darien smiled. "Tuxedo Mask is so much cooler."

"Ahem." Serena cleared her throat, bumping his hip with hers. "Do I get an opinion?"

Darien grinned toward her. "Everyone knows Tuxedo Mask is your favorite, too."

Color tinted Serena's cheeks.

"Oooh, Nee-chan's blushing!" Buji said slyly. "Don't tell me you have a crush on that pansy, onee-chan? I'm so much cooler than he is!"

"Yeah, when you're not busy making mud pies and eating worms," Darien muttered.

Buji glared at him. "At least I don't burn my mud pies."

"I don't make mud pies," Darien retorted.

"So?"

"_So_, you can't degrade my mud pie baking skills if I don't make mud pies – "

THHHBBB! Buji stuck out his tongue.

Serena laughed. "Take it from someone who knows, Shields," she advised him. "You can't fight the mentality of an eight-year old."

"I do it everyday with you," Darien returned.

"Oooooohhhhh." Buji looked at Serena, grinning. "You gonna take that from him, onee-chan?"

Serena made a face at him. "No way! He's paying for the kites now!"

Darien groaned. "Then at least make sure you get me the Tuxedo Mask one," he said.

Serena nodded, laughing, and looked down at the kite to see what Tuxedo Mask was doing on it to see if she could use it for any further insults. But the sight that met her eyes turned her face pink and sealed her lips.

Buji, however, wore Darien's raised-eyebrows expression. "Ew. Why would you want a kite with Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon ki – "

Serena slapped a hand over Buji's mouth. "Killing youma!" She finished, laughing loudly. "HA HA HA HA HA! Why not, Honey-Bunny-chan?"

Darien's face creased. As Buji went back to rummaging through the rest of the kites to look for the best Sailro Moon one, he leaned down towards Serena. "What aren't you telling me, Odango?" he whispered in her ear.

Serena blushed harder. "Nothing!" she responded at the same volume. "I just thought you wouldn't want to put up with Buji insulting Tuxedo Mask anymore."

"Hmmm," said Darien, but he moved back.

Serena breathed an internal sigh of relief, looking down at the kite in her hands again. Roses formed the border of the diamond-shaped plastic, and in the center were Tuxedo Mask and Sailor Moon alright – but they were kissing, not killing youma.

Someone sure took some creative liberties, she thought, but she made a note to herself to come back to the store without Darien and buy a copy of the kite for her own. Just, you know. For laughs.

12:04.

Darien sighed and shifted the bags in his hands again as the polystyrene staps dug into his wrists. "I hate not being able to drive," he muttered to himself, thinking longingly of his red sports car sitting lonely and gathering dust in the parking garage of his apartment. It had been a month, but he still hadn't been able to bring himself to sell it, though in all likelihood he would never be able to drive again, heightened perception or not. Maybe he'd give it to Serena when she finally got her license – though that seemed a rather cruel fate for such a loyal car, he thought, smiling slightly to himself.

Buji elbowed him. "Earth to Darien-baka," he said, and his smile soured as the child's words reminded him of who he was. Or rather, who he was the reincarnation of.

"Dare-Bear, we've got two votes for pizza," Serena's voice said, fingers touching his arm. He heard the grin in her voice. "But we figured we should ask for your vote anyways."

"I thought we were having a picnic?" Darien lifted a brow. "I'm hardly an expert, but pizza is hardly the food that comes to mind when I contemplate a picnic."

"Pizza belongs to any and every occasion," Serena declared, throwing her arms out. "Right, Buji?"

"Right, onee-chan."

The threesome had to retrace their steps back to the arcade to pick up a pizza from the parlor a few doors down.

"At this rate, we'll arrive at the park by dusk," said Darien. 'Why couldn't we have just gone to the sandwich shop across the street from the park?"

"And my mom thinks _I_ complain a lot." Buji rolled his eyes.

"If you're gonna do something, Darien, you gotta do it right." Serena mopped her forehead after this wise speech. "Although even with this breeze it's getting pretty hot…maybe we should just go bowling."

Buji's eyes turned into dish plates. "But - but we got Sailor Moon kites and everything!"

"That's true," said Darien quickly. He hadn't meant to ruin the kid's day… But at the same time, if Serena was getting overheated –

"Joking!" exclaimed Serena. "I was joking! We're still going to fly kites, don't worry."

"Oops, it looks pretty crowded," she said then, peering into the pizza parlor. She swallowed and tugged at her bangs, trying to quell the squirming in her stomach. "I'll go in to pick up the pizza and you guys stay out here."

"You sure?" asked Darien swiftly, sensing her anxiety, but Buji was already tugging his arm.

Serena didn't bother to force a smile because she knew he couldn't see it. "I'll be fine."

Darien heard the bells on the door ring as she pushed it open, felt the cool gush of air hit his face as it closed again.

"Darien-baka!" Buji was tugging on his hand still. "Let's go over here for a second!"

"What for?" Darien asked, but allowed himself to be pulled. "Hang on, slow down a little, I don't trust you not to lead me through dog excrement – "

"Hey, guys!" Buji called out to someone.

"Buji!"

"Hey, Buji!"

"What's up, man?"

Oh, great, a whole herd of them, Darien thought. Just what I need, more obnoxious eight year olds.

"Whatcha doing, Buji?" One of them asked.

Darien felt Buji shrug, the cloth of his t-shirt brushing Darien's elbow. "Oh, me and Darien are just hanging out."

Darien felt an incredulous grin flicker across his face. Was Buji _using_ him?

Sure enough, he heard little "ooh"s and "wow"s. "Is he your big brother, Buji?"

"Me and Darien? Nah, we're just friends." Darien felt a small fist punch him in the arm. "Right, Dare?"

Hilarity now wracked Darien's insides, and he was having an extremely difficult time containing it. He managed a strangled "Right, man" without bursting into laughter. Wait until Odango heard about this…

"So what were you guys doing?" Buji asked casually.

From the sounds he heard, the kids scrambled over one another to tell what they'd been doing.

"Check it out – "

"We found it just a inute ago – "

"There're flies all over it, isn't it awesome - ?"

"We guess it must have gotten run over or something – "

Darien felt Buji tugging him along as he moved closer to the excited kids. "It's a _cat_," he heard Buji breathe before he was suddenly hit by one of the flashes. Black space, studded with stars, shimmering silver, golden hair, blood.

_Luna_?

"Buji." Darien heard his own tense voice as though from a distance. Inside, he was focusing his concentration to glean something – anything – more. "Check its head. Is there anything on it?"

Sharp – sharp – a musky scent like decaying leaves – that was all Darien could get.

"There's a…moon?" Surprise tinged Buji's voice. "Hey, doesn't Onee-chan have a cat – "

Darien cut him off. "Buji, what's happened to it? Is it bleeding?"

"Yeah, on its tummy – "

"Nowhere else?"

"No – I don't think so – Darien-baka?"

"You guys should leave," Darien said in the direction he heard the children's feet scuffing the sidewalk. "You could get sick from being around this cat, okay? Get away from here."

Obediently, the feet pounded away down the sidewalk, with a coupled mumbled "Bye, Buji!"s.

"Darien!" Buji's voice held a note of fear. "What's wrong? That's Serena's cat, isn't it?"

"You're sure it has a moon on its forehead?" Darien pressed.

Buji nodded so hard that Darien heard it. "Uh-huh!"

"Then, yes, it is Serena's cat."

"Are we going to take it to her?"

"No, we're not going to touch it." Darien seized Buji's hand. "Let's go back to the pizzeria – c'mon, Buji, you've got to lead me, remember?" A note of Darien's annoyance at his dependency leaked into his voice.

"Yes!" Buji began to move, gripping Darien's hand very hard.

Darien sighed. His tension was infecting the child. He squeezed Buji's hand. "Calm down, Buji. It's okay. Look, can you do something for me?"

Again, Buji nodded so vigorously Darien heard his neck cracking.

"We're not going to tell Serena about her cat right now, okay? She'll be really sad when she finds out, so we're going to wait, got it?"

"But won't she be sad we didn't tell her when she does find out?"

"If we tell her now, she'll be sad all day," Darien said. "If we don't tell her now, we can protect her happiness for a little while longer. That's what friends are for, right?"

"I don't know," said Buji slowly. "Friends are supposed to take care of you…but I don't think they should make your decisions for you."

Darien stopped abruptly. Buji was jerked backward by the sudden stop.

"Buji," Darien began, squatting to be at Buji's level. His hands reached out and found Buji's face. Buji flinched backward at first, pushing a little sting into Darien's heart, but then stayed very still. Darien's fingers found the child's eyes so that he could focus his own there steadily. "Please do this for me just this once. Please."

He felt Buji's nod this time instead of heard it. He let go of his face and stood again. Wordlessly, Buji took his hand and began walking again.

Inside, Darien felt unhappy. Buji had probably obeyed because he had intimidated him, feeling all over his face and staring at him with his freskish eyes. He'd probably traumatized the poor kid. And what he said echoed what Serena always wanted – she never wanted him to hide things from her. But he felt so bad already about her scars and how fragile she was, and Ami and Rei's disappearance, Venus dying – what would finding that Luna had died do to her? Even if the feline had nearly murdered her – not unlike Rei and Venus – Serena nevertheless felt acutely responsible for and connected to them.

He placated himself with the vow that he would tell her about it _eventually_. But on top of that was the mystery – what had killed Luna? If she was only bleeding in her chest, she had certainly not been merely hit by a car. It seemed more like a stabbing. So the question was, had it been by some cruel pedestrian, or by a higher power – perhaps the very owners of the voices Darien had heard during the Beryl battle?

Buji stopped, and so did he. Not a moment later, the bells jingled again and Darien's nose detected the faint scent of Serena's flowery shampoo. "Wow!" she said. "Did that take a long time or what?"

Buji didn't answer; Darien nudged him. He started.

"We were fine, onee-chan," he answered quickly. He took a deep breath. "Mmm! Can I have some pizza now?"

"Nope, nope, gotta wait till we get to the park!"

1:42

Thus the day ended, as all of Serena and Darien's summer days seemed to, in the park. In their kite flying, Serena had lost grip of her kite. The wind had snatched it away and dragged it thorugh the sky, over the trees. Serena had grabbed Buji's hand, and Buji had grabbed Darien's hand, and they all went running after the kite, Serena and Buji yelling and laughing for the kite to "STOOOOOOOOOOOOPPP!"

Pretty soon, they were under the trees and couldn't see more than snatches of the sky. Serena still heard the whipping of the wind slapping the plastic of the kite overhead, though, and hurried them onward –

Then went "OOF!" and disappeared from Buji's sight.

Buji gripped Darien's hand tighter as he rushed forward. "Onee-chan!"

"What happened?" Darien demanded, chest constricting – but then he focused and felt the dip of the earth.

"You guys!" Serena's head popped back up, leaves poking out of her buns. "There's a secret garden down here!"

Buji let go of Darien's hand and scrambled down the half-buried cement lip. Darien sat, feeling in front of him with his hands as he lowered himself down into the sunken circle of dirt-covered and weed-entangled concrete. He felt Serena's hand slide absently into his to guide him down – not that he needed it. He could intimately feel every nook and cranny, dip and weakness of this earth, the porosity of the soil and concentration of the tree roots.

"I've never been back here before," said Serena in an awed voice. Darien felt the tug on his hand as she turned, drinking in their surroundings. "It's so…"

"Quiet," finished Buji. "Blegh. I don't like it."

Darien agreed with the kid. A silence like this, in which they heard only their own voices and breathing and their feet whispering on the carpet of decaying leaves, seemed sinister to him.

"Oh, come on!" Serena tugged on Darien's hand, deliberately this time, and he felt his bottom hit the ground. "Pretend it's a fairy circle!"

This comparison was even less reassuring to Darien. "Might I remind you, Odango," he said, "that people caught in fairy circles rarely emerged from them sane, if they emerged from them at all?"

"Huh?" This was Buji, sounding alarmed. "I mean – whatever! That's dumb!"

"Amen to that." Serena poked Darien in the gut. "What kind of fairy tales did you read? Those icky Grimm ones?"

Darien snorted. "Those 'icky Grimm ones' are the actual ones," he said. "Not the Disney-fied dubbed American mush you've been spoonfed."

Her tone as she replied made him sure she was wrinkling her nose. "Mush they may be, but I prefer the version of 'Sleeping Beauty' where she wakes up to a handsome prince's kiss instead of a crying newborn baby and stretch marks."

"I think they both sound gross." Buji deposited his two cents' worth. "What are stretch marks?"

"Something Onee-chan doesn't have," answered Darien hastily. "So – how about that pizza now, Odango?"

"Definitely!" said Serena, just as hastily. They'd both forgotten there was a pre-teen present. "Um, here's napkins, guys – "

"The pizza's cold," Buji complained.

"Did you think it was getting warmer while you and Serena harassed those kites?" Darien said. He couldn't reist adding, "_Sandwiches_ wouldn't have gotten cold."

"Motoki-onii-chan said Darien-baka had gotten quieter since he got attacked by a youma," commented Buji, "but I can see that his mouth is just as big as ever, onee-chan."

Both Serena and Darien were quiet for a moment, stunned. This was the first time anyone had directly, no beating aroudn the bush, referred to their "youma attack" to their faces since the single night of interrogations after it first happened. Even their best friends had not attempted to broach it, and here was this eight-ear old calmly referring to it!

Serena let out a sudden sound and seized Buji in a hug. "Ooh! I love you so much!"

"Why?" asked Buji in a strangled voice that still managed to retain its sarcasm. "Because I insulted Darien-baka?"

"Well, that, too," conceded Serena. "But mostly, just for being you." She beamed down at him.

3:58.

"Hola, amigos!" Serena greeted, skipping up to the counter with Darien in tow.

"Buenos dias!" Asanuma returned, turning around to face them. His elbow hit his fresh construction of cards, and it collapsed, but he paid it no mind.

"How was Buji?" Motoki asked, moving from drying shake glasses to refilling the straw dispenser.

"As impertinent as ever," Darien answered dryly. He settled comfortably into a stool. Serena let go of him and climbed onto the stool beside him. "And of course Odango encourages him."

"What else am I supposed to do, with you insulting him every other minute?"

"Oh, Darien, you bully small children now?" Asanuma tsked. "For shame."

"Don't feel sorry for him!" Darien retorted, stabbing the floor broodingly with his cane. "That overgrown prokaryote gives as good as he gets!"

"Is that true, Serena-chan?" Asanuma gave her wide-eyed shock.

"I told you he's Darien's clone," Serena answered. Toki planted a milkshake in front of her, and her mouth gravitated toward the straw. Half the glass was empty before she continued. "Except he likes me more than Darien does."

Darien scowled more darkly.

"That's your cue to protest," Asanuma whispered to Darien.

"I'm not going to compete with a six year old!"

"What?" Serena poked him. "You won't compete with him? What do you call that contest over who could count higher?"

"Male bonding."

"If you guys are going to fight over Serena's affections so much, why not just have it out in a duel?" This was Lita's contribution.

"You'll forgive me if I laugh at that suggestion," said Darien. "Considering who it's coming from, Miss Serena's-MY-best-friend!"

They all snickered as Lita glowered.

L

A Not-So-Typical Day in the Life of Serena and Darien: Post-Beryl:

Mugginess had descended on Tokyo. Serena peeled her shirt away from her back for the third time in ten minutes and thought grumpily to herself that if she wanted to sweat like this, she would have gone to the greenhouse with her mother to pick out begonias.

Her mind traitorously pointed out to her that she'd be a lot cooler if she had worn a tank top instead of a long-sleeved shirt. A whole drawer full of spaghetti-strapped shirts sat in her room, second from the bottom.

She had put one on a few days ago. Had told herself that the shirts didn't go that low, that only part of the scars would be visible.

Yet somehow it seemed as though the shirts had shrunk and the scars she had received during the battle with Beryl had lengthened. Silvery and snaky and thick, like slug trails winding down her shoulder blades to disappear beneath the shirt's material. The front had been even worse; they slithered all the way up to her collarbone, bumpy and ugly.

She didn't want anyone to see that. How ugly it was, how ugly she was. It was shallow, she knew. Just like the scars were shallow, just like how her outer appearance didn't mean anything about her inner appearance. She had told herself the same thing when she had acne in seventh grade, but that hadn't alleviated the shame she felt, and this case was no different. She was going to wear concealing shirts and never show her back for the rest of her life.

She wondered it Lita suspected her thoughts on this. At the park earlier that morning (Lita had been teaching her jujitsu since the summer began at the park in the morning), she thought she had noticed Lita watching her thoughtfully. But the brunette hadn't said anything. For that she was grateful, as well as for Lita agreeing to teach her.

Serena rolled her shoulders. She liked the way they felt after an hour of sparring with Lita. Somehow the soreness tasted like independence. Like power. (Even if Lita knocked her on her butt at least four times a lesson.) She felt like the burning her muscles was their way of telling her, "We can kick butt now. We can be strong now!"

Because in that fight with Beryl, she hadn't done _anything_.

She shook her head. No time to think about that now. Besides, it wasn't like she had any new thoughts on the topic; she'd thought about it a million times already. No, now she needed to focus on the next order of the day: taking Darien grocery shopping.

She had told him yesterday that she would pick him up at his apartment, but she had the feeling he hadn't listened to her. She twitched a finger and brushed it across the rope. In the three weeks that had passed since Beryl, the rope barely ever eluded her grasp now. It was as easy to find as her Subspace Pocket.

The rope gave her the taste of coffee and a keen amusement. She growled under her breath and let go of it, then beelined for the arcade.

"I said I'd meet you at your apartment!" She stormed through the sliding doors and straight towards the dark-haired boy sitting at the counter.

"You're lucky Asanuma's still sleeping, or he'd have been all over that," replied Darien unabashedly, taking a sip from his mug.

Serena flushed and kicked him.

"Now, Serena," said Motoki, coming over. "Shouldn't you be proud of Darien for getting all the way here on his own?"

"_No_, I shouldn't be!" Serena glared very hard at Darien even though the blind youth was undoubtedly comfortably oblivious to the weight of her stare and continued to unconcernedly sip his coffee. "What if you'd gotten run over?"

"Give me some credit," said Darien, blinking his golden eyes. "I'm not you. I wouldn't walk right into traffic."

"Ouch." Motoki winced. "You two are in rare form today."

"For real." Serena folded her arms. Thinking about how useless she'd been in the battle against Beryl had cut the wick of her temper short. "You're being a crab, Darien."

"That's because you're insisting on treating me like a two year old – "

"You guys!"

They all, including a grim Darien, turned toward Asanuma's tense voice.

Asanauma's face, under the tan it had gained over the past month of summer, was pale. His steps were quick and feverish, as he ducked through the crowd of summer enjoyers to the counter.

"What is it?" asked Motoki, already ready with a soda for his friend.

Asanuma didn't even notice the glass Motoki offered to him. "Rei's grandpa is dead."

Silence blanketed them all like a cloud stretching across the moon. They all stared at each other, save Darien, whose hand was suddenly on Serena's arm.

She slid off her stool, her arm slipping from his grasp. "Just now?"

"I don't think so." Asanuma, clenched and unclenched his fingers, agitated and uncertain. "I just saw on my way here – there was an ambulance and a gurney bringing him out. I heard one of them say he'd been dead for a week at least."

"And they still haven't found Rei…my God." Motoki passed a cloth across the countertop out of habit, his eyes cloudy. He looked up. "Do they suspect foul play?"

"Her grandpa was sick for a really long time," said Serena. Her eyes were on her shoes and her fists balled up.

Asanuma looked sick. "He must have stopped trying after… after she left."

"I wonder if she cared about him at all." Lita's voice was caustic. "She must have known what her leaving would do to him."

"Don't – " started Asanuma angrily.

"Stop it!" Motoki stepped in. He looked back and forth between them all, as though he could not understand them. "None of us has any right to judge her. None of us even knew what her home life was like except Serena."

Darien twitched.

Serena wrapped her hand around his. Conflicting emotions raged within her: fear and horror for Rei and her grandfather; anger, too, that Rei had left her grandfather to die and that Lita was so quick to judge her; and sorrow that somehow that misunderstanding that caused Rei to leave had arisen. Surprise because Darien had not spoken against Rei – in a way – and more sadness because Asanuma missed Rei so much. And more sadness yet because Rei was gone and so was Ami – and Venus –

It was only when the bells on the electronic doors jingled that Serena jerked from her thoughts to realize she and Darien had exited the arcade.

It was not until they'd rounded the corner that Darien spoke.

"You've done all you can."

Serena's lips tightened. She pressed her arms tighter against her chest and did not answer.

"Talk, Serena."

She opened her mouth, waiting for words to inflate on her tongue…but just as quickly as they were full, the air hissed back out of them again, and she sighed. Rei and Ami were gone, vanished. Luna had come into her room one night demanding to know where they were. That was a month ago. No one had seen hide nor hair of either girl since.

Serena was afraid. Neither girl had been in the best shape emotionally or physically, and moreover, she was afraid the engineer of that _dues ex machina_ that Darien had referred to had some part in their disappearance. Suppose they were dead like Venus now?

Irritation, sour, coated her tongue suddenly. She swallowed, and it did not disappear – she realized it was Darien. Her eyes saw his fists, clenched, and flicked to his face, half-hidden by his grown-out hair. Why was he – ?

"Darien?" she asked cautiously.

"Nothing."

Serena felt a twinge. She hated this, how since they'd left the hospital Darien had times when he would suddenly clam up. "No! Why do you feel so annoyed?"

"Because I'm blind, okay?" he snapped. "Blind people get annoyed sometimes – and I'm blind, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember!" Serena snapped back, the anger that drenched the rope from him seeping into her also. "I'm the one who won't let you forget you're blind, remember?"

The anger cooled slightly into steely humor. "Yeah, that was kind of the whole point of my sarcasm, Odango."

Serena's muscles relaxed slightly. She knew everything was okay when he called her Odango. Appellations of "Odango" and "Nerdboy" served as the olive branches of their battles.

But she wasn't letting him off the hook. "Why were you so angry?"

"How about I answer your question with a request?" Darien rubbed his forehead. Beneath the long bangs, dark shadows smudged his eyes. "Please stop being quiet."Serena's jaw dropped. "…"

"Wow, great example of what I just asked you _not_ to do!" exclaimed Darien sardonically.

Serena peeled her jaw off the sidewalk. "Well, can you blame me?" she demanded. "I'm used to people telling me to stop talking so much, not to stop being quiet." _Or at least, I used to be_, she realized abruptly.

"Yeah, well, those people weren't _blind_." Darien placed bitter stress on the word again. "When you go all quiet like that, I can't tell what you're thinking."

Serena raised an eyebrow, though she knew he couldn't see it. "Isn't that what the rope's for?"

A scowl darkened Darien's face. "I don't need a psychic mental connection to be able to read your moods, Odango."

Serena mirrored his scowl. "I'm not that transparent."

"To me you are," Darien retorted.

"Then what am I thinking right now?" Serena challenged, wheeling around to step into his path and stop him on the sidewalk. He collided with her, so she took a step back, rubbing her nose and looking up at him expectantly.

"Okay," said Darien, an extra frown line added to his forehead at having collided with her. "Right now you're thinking your nose hurts and my chest is too hard."

Serena stopped rubbing her nose and glared.

"And now you're mad because I was right," continued Darien. "But you're about to say, 'If you can't tell what I'm thinking when I'm quiet, how did you tell what I was thinking just now? I didn't say anything!' And my answer is, because every other of the million times you've run into me, you always complain my chest is too hard. So technically - "

"That's cheating," Serena cut him off, but to her horror, he finished with her, saying the exact same words. "Ack! How did you do that?"

"Using a complex mathematical formula involving your height and hair color," he said. "Now for God's sake, Serena, neither Rei's grandfather's death, nor Venus's death, nor Rei and Ami's leaving are your fault."

Again, Serena opened her mouth to reply. Again, she stopped. This time because she noticed the little girl waiting at the bus stop beside her mother and staring straight at her. Serena's eyes flinched away from the girl's, skittering like M&M's across a tabletop, and she turned her head away, pulling her bangs, which she had grown out in the past month, into her face.

Darien's loud sigh was like a slap in the face. She jumped and felt miserable.

"I'm sorry." Her voice was a whisper muffled in her hands.

Staring at the sidewalk, she heard another sigh. But then a hand settled on her shoulder and pulled her against him. She turned her head and hid her scars in his shirt, hating herself for being so weak, so vulnerable to merely other people, so dependent on him.

Self-contempt filled her, but she couldn't bring herself to pull her head away.

L

"Wow, good job, guys." Lita's voice was dry as a desert.

Asanuma threw her a not-too-friendly look, his face like a thundercloud. "You weren't exactly an innocent bystander."

"C'mon, guys." As always, Motoki was the placating middle party. "You know they're both really tense right now."

"And the rest of us aren't?" A pile of shredded napkin sat in front of Asanuma. "Rei is _gone_."

"So is Ami Mizuno, but I don't see you worrying about her." Lita shoved her waitress notebook into her pocket with unnecessary force. Her eyes blazed at him. "Get off your noble high horse."

"You know, I can't blame Serena and Dare for leaving." Motoki shook his head. "Not many people enjoy spending time with a pair of bloodthirsty jackals."

Asanuma spoke into his drink. "She started it."

"My butt I started it!" Lita snapped. She knew quite well that she had been the one to make the inflammatory comment, but Asanuma was really getting on her nerves with this crap. What, he thought Serena hadn't been thinking about Rei nonstop already, worrying her brains out about her? The second she'd gotten out of the hospital she'd gone to see her, and Ami, and neither of them had been home. Ami's mother hadn't even reported her missing, though it had been a week since Rei's grandfather had seen Rei. Serena had spent days pacing through their usual streets, traveling to a beach they'd gone once, retreating deep into herself to try to find a string like the one she shared with Darien. She'd even called Rei's father. All that trying and all it had gotten her was a pair of steadily darkening shadows beneath her eyes and draining of her face's color. Then Asanuma had to come in and breathe life into it again –

"It doesn't make a damn difference who started it!" said Toki, and this time he was the one snapping. Lita and Asanuma both jerked up, staring at him. "You're making them draw away! Do you want them to isolate themselves altogether? Huh?"

Asanuma and Lita both looked away, color burning beneath their cheeks.

Motoki inhaled. "Just – take a second and think a little more about them, okay? I know you're worried about Rei, Numa, but you don't know where she is to help her. Serena and Darien are here right under your nose. Work a little harder at keeping them around." He breathed again and unwrapped a roll of coins. "Tonight, I don't want to hear a single uncharitable peep directed at each other out of either of you."

"Yes, Mother," both teens said dully.

Asanuma, apparently unable to resist a jab even in the somber atmosphere, said, "That's pretty messed up that you're dating your mother, Lita."

L

Darien concentrated very hard on the hard surface. It was cool, smooth – but to feel anymore than that would be cheating. He concentrated harder, clenching his eyes tighter as though that would squeeze more information out. But no – still all he could get was an overwhelming phantom scent of melting plastic.

He gave up. "Serena, what is this?"

He felt the breath of air as Serena turned around to look. He could picture the puzzled but indulging look she was probably giving him.

"It's an empty plastic jar," her voice said.

Darien's eyebrows flew up. "An _empty_ plastic jar," he repeated. Well, that explained a lot…

"Yup. For…well, I dunno. Keeping caterpillars in or something. Hmm…"

He could almost hear her eyebrows furrowing. "Don't short-circuit too many brain cells thinking about it, Odango," he said dryly. "It's just a jar."

"Hmmph. I could have said the same thing to you." He heard her sniff. "You were pretty focused on it a second ago. Your face was turning all red like you were about to explode. What's with you stopping and touching everything in every row? It makes these shopping trips really long."

Darien put on a hurt face, one that was only partially faked. He did feel bad about Serena always bringing him on these shopping trips. She had better things to do, he knew. "I'm just trying to identify things by only touching them," he lied, and this was only a partial lie. "After all, you won't always be here to lead me around the grocery store."

"With the grades I got this year, I'll probably be the person stocking the shelves here for the rest of my life," Serena returned wryly. "So don't worry about me not being here." She squeezed his arm. "Now, time for the rice row…"

Serena's hand wasn't as soft as it used to be. Darien didn't need to use the bizarre new intuition budding within him to notice that. Serena had been taking informal jujitsu lessons with Lita since school ended, and now calluses rasped against his palms on the ever-more-rare occasions when his hand mets hers.

He knew this wasn't the only thing that was different about her. They were all different now, after Beryl's defeat. Lita was more cheerful than usual; it seemed as though she was trying to compensate for the quietness that had settled over Serena since Venus died. Motoki hovered more than ever, well-aware that something had happened to them but unable to cure them with the milkshakes that had once been their ultimate panacea. Asanuma had sharpened, like an arrowtip rubbed to a point against a whetstone. He still made jokes, but there was a watchful pause in the conversation now before he spoke. Darien could not see what he was doing during these pauses, but he felt as though Asanuma was watching, weighing. This was one of the most annoying things to him when it came to being blind, that he could not see Asanuma. He felt as though his friend were a dangerous knife, double-edged, and now he did not have the ability to see which way he was pointed. Rei's disappearance had affected him as strongly as it had Serena.

And here he came to THE most annoying thing about his blindness: not being able to see Serena. Motoki had accounted to him the changes that had occurred in her – scars, weight loss, longer hair, dull eyes – and he couldn't STAND that he could not see them himself. It was like giving up his role of her protector to someone else because he was no longer capable of it.

And yet, though Serena hid herself so well and he felt so FRUSTRATED by his inability to see the flickers in her expression, he could still practically see her in his mind's eye. When he would say something, he could picture her wrinkling her nose, or the way she would bite her lip, or the way her eyes would widen.

But he was pretty sure they were real, these images of her expressions, because they came to him in the same way these new flashes of intuition – like his inexplicable vision of Venus's past, and the smell of the plastic jar, and countless other instances of _sensing_ since he obtained the Golden Crystal – came to him.

"Darien, brown rice is gross."

At Serena's voice, he jerked himself back to the here and now. "Huh? No, it isn't."

"Is too."

"No, it isn't."

Here, again, was an image in his head of her wrinkling her nose and scowling. And –

"Serena, don't put white rice in that cart," Darien warned.

A frustrated "ARGH!" and a stomping and rustle of plastic. Then something landing in the cart.

Serena grumbled. "I don't get how you always CATCH me."

"Because you always try it," he said. "Try not doing it for a couple weeks. Lull me into a false sense of security. THEN do it."

"You're never secure," Serena said. The cart wheels began to click (they always spent ten minutes at the beginning to find the annoying cart with the clicking wheels so that Darien could hear it), and he followed her, passing a hand through the air in front of him to brush against her hair tail and ensure he was going the right direction. "If there was a superhero named Mr. Paranoid, you'd be him."

"And if there was a superhero who fell flat on her face every time she moved, it would be you."

"Not anymore!" said Serena proudly. "Lita's been teaching me all those kick-butt moves!"

Darien settled for expressing his displeasure with a single "hmph."

Serena elbowed him in the gut. "Would you stop that? I need to learn how to fight now that I can't transform anymore!"

Darien glowered into the darkness of his vision. Serena wasn't getting within twenty feet of a youma again, if he had things his way – and God so help him, he was going to get his way.

"Oh, we need to get going!" Serena exclaimed suddenly. "It's almost six!"

She slapped his hands on the cart's handle under hers and hurried them down the aisles so quickly that Darien didn't get a chance to touch and try to sense any more foods. So much for getting things his way. But Serena got _her_ way: they moved so quickly that by six-thirty, they were back at his apartment, where everyone had gathered to watch a movie.

"Late," said Lita as soon as he unlocked the door.

"Tardy is my middle name," said Serena cheerfully, squishing past Darien with bags hugged tight in her arms.

"You might be a gentleman and help her with the bags," Lita directed at Darien. "Oh, and by the way, you're out of Mountain Dew. Hope you got more."

Darien – who, in his defense, was holding the bag containing the ice cream and milk – pushed the door shut behind him with a foot. "I'm really not liking this other people in my apartment thing," he muttered.

"As antisocial as ever, Dare-Bear." A hand landed on his shoulder.

Darien tipped his head. "Asanuma," he acknowledged.

"Yup! Didja miss me? _Like the deserts miss the rain_?" He broke into song for this part. Of course. "Who am I kidding? Of course you did!"

"I love how you let me get a word in otherwise," Darien told him, setting a foot in front of him, then another, still carefully, though over the past month he had gotten a pretty good feel for the distance between furniture in his apartment.

"Yeah, it's like being married, isn't it?" Asanuma laughed.

"Serena, did you make this?" Lita asked as Darien felt Serena taking the bag of ice cream out of his hands.

"What?" asked Serena. She nudged Darien gently out of the way with a hip as she moved towards the fridge. He pressed his back against the counter, feeling a little flushed.

"Hey! I keep forgetting to ask! How was the beach?" Motoki asked Asanuma, whose family had gone to the beach for a weekend a fortnight ago.

"Oh! Well, it's a funny thing, because for my birthday, I got a Speedo – "

"Oh, God." Darien kneaded his eyeballs. "I'm so glad I can't see."

"The only thing is that you should have used regular instead of wavy," Lita was saying to Serena now, "but other than that, it looks like a great casserole! I'm so proud of my little protégée! Learning the art of war _and_ cooking!"

"So then the lifeguard said I'd have to leave the beach – "

" – that store at the mall, you know? Mom said they're going out of business, so they must be going to have a going out of business sale – "

" – was a guy like that at the arcade once. He was messed up, he - "

Darien rubbed the bridge of his nose, rather overwhelmed. It was amazing what a difference there was when he could hear everything around him but not see it. It was as though his vision had been a buffer; when he focused on one conversation, he could listen only to it, but now without his vision, the protection was stripped away, and both chattered into his brain, demanding attention at equal volumes.

" – feel okay?"

At the hand on his head, he looked up. Well, not looked, but – you get the picture. "Fine," he said automatically.

Not really. He wasn't really looking forward to this night of noise and liveliness. He felt so detached from them all now, as though he belonged in a different world that they didn't belong to. When he was alone with Serena, it was fine, but with everyone all at once, he had to fight for equal interaction, and he was the weak link in the evolutionary chain; he had lost one limb and couldn't run as fast as the rest of them. So instead he faded into the background. At one time, this would not have bothered him – three years ago, say, or even a few months ago, before he was blind and could just fade into the background but still watch. Now, however, he couldn't sit back and watch. All he could do was sit back. And that meant he wasn't part of the family.

"Hey, Toki and I will take care of putting away the rest," said Lita's voice suddenly. "You guys go sit down and pick out what we're going to watch."

Darien felt simultaneous surges of gratitude and anger. Gratitude towards Lita because she had noticed his out-of-placeness and created an escape from it, but anger because she had been able to detect his struggle. He was so weak, so weak… His cane rapped against the couch, and he sat down, nerves alive with self-disgust.

No one commented when Serena sat on the floor and leaned against Darien's legs, but everyone noticed, even Motoki and Lita from the kitchen.

"Are we sure we want to watch a movie?" asked Asanuma, draping himself over the armchair. "We could play cards instead."

All heads swiveled toward Darien. Predictably, a small scowl tinted his face. "For the fifteenth time, I'm fine with watching a movie!"

"Yeah, but it's not fun," said Serena from her spot. She rolled her head back to look up at Darien, picking up his hand and touching it lightly on her face so he could know where her face was directed. It still astonished and slightly bothered Lita to see how comfortably she did that. "We like doing things as a group, and you can't participate in this as much."

"Phrased with the eloquence of Thomas Jefferson," said Asanuma.

"Ditto," said Motoki.

"Eye roll," sighed Lita.

"Ditto," said Darien, but his scowl had lightened considerably.

Asanuma jumped up. "So let's go out!" He punched the remote, and the TV snapped off. "Where to?"

"NOT the arcade," said Motoki immediately, closely followed by vigorous nodding from Lita.

"Aw, already sick of working the counter, Lita?" Asanuma grinned.

Lita clutched her head theatrically. "All the cheerful kids…I can't handle it."

"How are you friends with Serena if you can't handle cheerful kids?" Darien raised an eyebrow, but no one except Serena noticed because his bangs were too long. She reached up and took a hunk of them in her fingers.

"When are you going to get your hair cut?" she asked. "It's getting dangerously close to emo length."

"_E_-mo!" Asanuma crowed.

"I'm NOT emo," Darien grumbled, opening the door and, amazingly, kicking Asanuma's shin on his first try. "Get out."

"Even when he can't see you he hits you," Motoki said in awe. "I mean – sorry, Dare – "

"Oh, shove it, Toki," said Darien tiredly. "Making blind jokes about me is the same as making grumpy cracks about me, and you've never hesitated to make those. I'm not going to commit suicide just because you call me blind."

Asanuma squawked suddenly – signifying he had made an attempt at something but been kicked by Darien again – "Although I may commit murder," continued Darien. "Numa, I swear to God…"

L

"Is there any more ketchup?"

"Last packet." Lita tossed the packet to Serena. "Cause SOMEONE had to waste them all on a condiment war –"

"Sweetheart, it's _tradition_," Motoki said, as though this excused it. "Tell her, Usa."

"I think it sort of is," Serena told Lita. "They did it at our last school field trip, too. At least this time it was in packets instead of squirtable bottles."

"Those had a longer range of fire," complained Asanuma, sucking on his red-stained shirt collar. "We need to start carrying those around in our pockets for cases such as these. Not our back pockets, though, that would get kind of awkward when we sit down."

Darien nudged Serena. "Is all the mustard gone?"

She glanced at his front. "Turn around." He complied. "Yup. You still smell like it, though. But you're always sour, so it's not like it's a big change." She grinned.

"Ha ha." He pressed his condensation-beaded soda against the back of her neck, and she flailed, shrieking at the temperature. "Payback."

"No, THIS is payback." He felt his shirt collar being pulled away from his neck. Immediately, he shoved backward. Another shriek, and then something solid and warm landed on him as his back hit the grass.

"Oh, my." He heard Asanuma's voice. "What are they up to now?"

He pushed Serena off of him and then levered himself back up. With chagrin he felt a hot flush under his skin. "As-a-nu-ma," he bit off each syllable threateningly. "Don't even start."

"You were the one who started it." Asanuma's grin was audible. "I'm just continuing it."

Darien heard a giggle – Serena's. He turned his head toward her. "Hey, you realize he's making fun of you, too, right?"

More giggles were her only response.

"Have some loyalty," he grumbled.

"Hey, guys," said Motoki, neatly rescuing Darien. "Look if you can see the comet. It's supposed to be visible pretty soon."

"Comet?" Asanuma flopped down on his back in the grass and stared up into the dark night sky. "What comet?"

"Yeah, what comet?" added Serena, stretching out in the grass perpendicular to Asanuma. She frowned, squirming a little. Something was mushy and wet under her back… "Asanuma!" she squeaked, fishing the ketchup packet – now empty, having divulged its contents on her shirt – out from under her back. "You did that on purpose!"

"What?" howled Asanuma, twisting in Serena's Death Grip on his throat. "It was Darien! I swear! I swear!"

Serena turned slowly. "Darieeeeen," she said slowly.

Darien flashed a grin. His gold eyes glowed slightly, like embers, in the darkness. "Payback for the pink squid on my school blazer," he said.

Serena pouted. "I could have used that last packet for the rest of my fries…"

"What?" demanded Asanuma. "I get choked half to death for NOT doing it, and Darien gets off with just a Serena-chan pout?"

"I don't see what you're complaining about, Numa," commented Motoki. He and Lita were already lying peacefully on their backs watching the sky. "A lot of guys would kill to have Usa-chan grab their necks like that."

"Not if Darien killed them first," retorted Asanuma.

"Darien wouldn't kill anyone," said Serena sensibly.

"Oh, wouldn't he?" chorused Lita and Asanuma simultaneously.

Darien grinned again, baring his teeth. "Yes, wouldn't I?"

"Not if you ever wanted me to talk to you again," said Serena sweetly.

"Like you could ever keep your mouth shut for longer than five minutes," said Darien, grinning.

"Oooh," said Asanuma. "Fighting words."

They were all laughing now. There is a point you reach sometimes, when your heart feels very full. Unlike your stomach, that fullness is never an unpleasant feeling; it does not make you feel bloated or superfluous. It is instead a sort of sparkling juice that fills you so full that it overflows and drenches the whole world with a sense of rightness. Of belonging. Sitting under the darkened sky in the soft grass with laughter mingling with the sleepy voices of birds and whispers of tree leaves all around them, Serena felt that wonderful coziness. The feeling of a puzzle piece that has finally found it place, embraced snugly by its family.

L

Motoki offered to walk the girls home, but he was turned down. He accepted it with good nature, because Lita, because of her arcade job, didn't spend as much time with Serena as usual, so this was a chance for them to catch up.

His house was on the way to Asanuma's, so they walked together. Asanuma walked with his hands in his pockets, scuffing at the ground with his shoes as they walked.

Motoki thought he knew why. "Numa, Rei'll turn up."

Asanuma kicked a stray stone visciously, sending it sailing out of sight. "Yeah, in a ditch beaten so badly they'll have to use her dental records to identify her."

"Whoah, whoah, whoah." Motoki grabbed Asanuma's shoulder, forcing the shorter boy to look at him. "Rei's a tough bird, Numa. She wouldn't let someone do something like that to her."

"There's only so much a hundred and ten pounds can do, Motoki," Asanuma retorted. "Besides, if she had left on her own, she would have come back when she heard about her gramps."

"Maybe she hasn't heard yet," soothed Motoki. "You said he was only found today. If she'd far away, she may not have found out."

Asanuma continued walking. They strode silently for about minute, then Asanuma stopped abruptly and spun. "You know what I think?"

"No, tell me."

"I think she's a Senshi."

Motoki had to blink. "Pardon?"

Asanuma eyed him in irritation. "I think Rei is a Senshi," he said. "Think about it. The youma attack at prom where Serena and Darien get hurt. The Senshi bring them back through a portal; then there's no more youma attacks or Senshi sightings. The Sailor Senshi disappeared at the same time as Rei did. Coincidence?"

"Um…" said Motoki. He saw some logic in the argument, but not enough to make him think Rei was a Sailor Senshi. Besides, hadn't Asanuma suspected Serena was a Senshi a while back, too? "Do you think Ami Mizuno's one, too?"

"Not sure," said Asanuma, and Motoki wasn't surprised. Not to be mean to his friend, but Asanuma didn't usually spare much thought for people he didn't actively care for. "If she is…well – " He glanced at Motoki.

Motoki regarded him a little uncertainly. "Well what?"

"Before Lita came along, who was always together?"

"Darien and Serena."

"No, before that."

"I can't remember life before Darien-and-Serena," said Motoki, grinning. At Asanuma's growl, he sobered. "Okay, fine. Rei, Ami, and Serena were attached at the...hip," he finished, eyes widening. "You think Serena's a Senshi, too? But she's still here, and the Senshi aren't."

"I know," said Asanuma. "But something's definitely up with her. No one's hair grows that fast in a week."

Motoki squirmed a little. This was something all of them had noticed but noen mentioned – Serena's hair had grown lierally half a meter since the day of prom to the few days later when they visisted her in the hospital. Darien's golden eyes they had been able to put down to the youma, and Serena's strangely silver scars, also, but a youma that grew hair out was just too improbable.

"I've had the feeling for a long time that they've been hiding something from us," said Asanuma.

Motoki did not speak for a moment, still absorbing the impact of the information. Then – "Hang on," he said. "Remember the time Darien's eyes went all blue? Like, no sclera, no pupils – "

"He's not a Sailor Senshi," said Asanuma, shrugging. "But he's definitely something."

Motoki smiled at this first comment, but below churned other emotions. He gazed at Asanuma. "What are you planning?"

There were two more stones in that path before them. Motoki saw Asanuma's leg moving back to kick them again; he bent quickly and scooped them up before he could.

Asanuma frowned at him a little, put out by Motoki's prevention of his anger outlet. "I'm not planning anything, Mama Toki."

Motoki raised his eyebrows.

Asanuma threw up his arms. "Well, wouldn't you like to know what the hell's going on? They've been keeping a whole identity secret from us! Obviously they don't consider us very trustworthy friends."

Motoki's hand had found that he had picked up two stones, not one. And glancing down at them, he saw they were surprisingly smooth and jewel-like in their appearance.

"Gimme your hand," he said.

Asanuma blinked at him. "Huh?"

Motoki beckoned at him. "Just give it to me."

Asanuma, eying him suspiciously, extended his hand. Motoki placed one of the stones in it.

"Look at that," said Motoki, holding open his own hand so Asanuma could see his, too.

Asanuma looked up, and sarcasm had tugged one of his light brows up. "A _rock_, Toki?"

"Two rocks," Motoki corrected. "One for you and one for me. See how nice they are? Not ugly little gravelly rocks, are they?"

"Noooo," drawled out Asanuma doubtfully, clearly unsure where this was headed.

"But you were about to kick them away," said Motoki, fingering the rock. It really did feel nice. It must be soft, for the heat of his hand had already begun to make it feel warm in his palm. "Because it was too dark for you to see what it was really like, so you assumed it was something else."

Asanuma let out a tired trickle of laughter. "I get it, Toki. Now let's let the lame metaphor go and just go home. I'm pooped."

"You smell like poop," said Motoki.

"You look like it."

"You feel like it."

"Your momma feels like it."

Motoki aimed a punch at Asanuma's face, and he ducked, shouting with laughter. Motoki took off after him amid taunts, but he slipped the stone into his pocket.

L

Back in his apartment, after everyone had left, Darien felt an unexpected emptiness. The apartment was so quiet, so dark, and just as empty as he was. He couldn't stand it.

He found the TV and pressed the power button, then made his way into his bedroom. From his bed he gathered up into his arms a pillow and a blanket and then, on a sudden second thought, another pillow. These he dumped back on the couch when he returned to the living room, then began the inevitably long search for the remote. Behind him, the TV, unsympathetic to his plight, continued to blare some rock music video channel that Asanuma had been watching before they left.

His hand, feeling across the left corner coffee table for the remote, hit something cold and hard – a picture frame. A grimace flickered across his face.

It was ironic. He had more pictures now, when he was blind, than he'd ever had in his life. He hadn't even noticed their presence until he was groping for the remote – just like now – one day so that Serena couldn't change the channel to her favorite (and very annoying, high-pitched) anime. His hand had knocked against something that had clattered over very loudly on the glass-topped side table.

He had picked it up and felt it. It had taken him an embarrassingly long moment to realize what it was: a picture frame.

"Oops," Serena had said, coming in. "I forgot to tell you I put some pictures around."

"What of?" he had asked, his fingertips sliding across the smooth and stubbornly taciturn glass covering the picture. A flash had actually kicked in then – stitches constricting his ribs.

"That one's the picture Asanuma took the time Motoki forgot the pants under his apron."

Darien had hastily withdrawn his fingers. (Who knew what he might have been fingering?) It had been a memory of laughter putting him in stitches."What else?"

"Well, there's some of all of us," Serena had said. "Even Lita – I pasted her to your dartboard. No, just kidding! That was mean, I'm horrible. You know, though, it looks kind of weird, a dartboard sitting in the middle of your wall with roses sticking out of it."

"Well, I don't usually have people at my apartment to see it," he had responded, a little stiffly. Then, as now, the feeling of Serena spending so much time babying him along had bothered him.

"I know," Serena had said. "That's why I put pictures up. That way, when your sight comes back, if it comes back while you're here and not with us, we'll still be the first things you see, smiling back at you!"

"And that's not conceited at all," he had said, but there had been a smile inside him. And now, as he sat in his dark empty apartment, it lit a warmth inside him too, and pushed the bubble of emptiness surrounding him away for a while.

A knock sounded on the door just when Darien had reached that point when you still realize you're falling asleep but that realization is in the very deepest, farthest back corner of your brain.

His limbs jerked, and he bolted up. "Damn it, Toki," he muttered even as he stood up and shuffled around the couch to the door. His friend must have forgotten his keys again, as he always did…

He opened the door, yawning. The voice that answered his mumbled "Yeah?" however, was not Toki's.

"Darien?" It was husky but melodic. And familiar. It put a frown on Darien's face. Again, that bitter frustration of not being able to see slammed into him…

"Yes?" he said, warily and awake this time. "Who is it?"

"Darien. You – "

Darien did not hear the rest. He had fallen to his knees, muscles bulging under his t-shirt as he strained against – _something – _and then he was sprawled on the floor, out cold.

L


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Buckets of thank you's to everyone who has read this far! Please have patience with this chapter; it may prove confusing.

Hi! JadeEye again, heres chapter 2. Enjoy! Leave reviews please!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Part Two: The "R" in SMR Stands for "Return"

L

It came suddenly, the message.

Wailing in his mind, his mother Makaiju crying out to him in pain.

He had to go back. Something was happening to his mother.

He told Darien he had to leave. The creature could not understand why. He cried, and Fiore wished he could bring Darien with him. He had seen during his time here that no one talked to Darien but him, how the other beings whispered around him. Darien was alone here, just as Fiore had been in the darkness of space. But if he brought Darien out into the galaxy, away from this backwater planet, his incredible aura would be sensed and preyed upon. _When you receive, you must give._ Darien had given him energy to live, and he would give the chance to live by not taking him with him.

However, he shivered at the thought of another icy eternity floating through space, scrimping scraps of energy to keep alive until he reached the Makaiju. And who knew then if the Makaiju itself would have the energy to keep him alive?

A miracle arrived, however, when he was about to leave. Darien srambled up onto the roof of the building they had stayed in. He held something bright within his hand.

"Fiore!" he shouted and shoved it at Fiore.

Fiore stared down at it, scarcely believing his eyes. It was a flower – a rose, Darien had called it when they accidentally fell into a bush of them and came out bleeding. But not just a flower. It brimmed with energy, swirling between each petal.

So much of it that Fiore barely recognized it as Darien's.

This would be far more than enough to keep him alive to reach the Makaiju!

He looked at Darien. The boy was panting, but he managed to speak. "For_ you_."

Fiore still couldn't believe it. That someone would do this for him… "Thank you, Darien." _When you receive, you must give._ He grabbed Darien's hand. "Someday, I'll do something for you. I'll bring you back a flower just as perfect as this is!"

Darien sniffled. Fiore wanted him to smile. He wanted him to feel as happy as he did. "I promise, Darien! I'll come back!"

And finally, Darien did smile. He wiped his nose and said shakily, "You better, Fiore!"

Fiore left, then. And with the energy from Darien's rose, he was able to stay awake and conscious during the long, lonely trip back to the Makaiju. He had enough energy to grow, even, as the long light years passed. As he grew and sped through systems, he looked faithfully for a flower whose beauty could compare to that of the rose he kept clutched constantly in his hand.

L

Darien found out not long after the battle with Beryl that he was the ruler of, in addition to the earth, a place called Elysion. Ignorant of its existence until he woke up one night and found himself there, he was, needless to say, rather shocked.

His trip there began during his first night home from the hospital. He had transformed into Tuxedo Mask and stood on his balcony, gripping the railing very tightly.

Muggy air had sat upon his face, about as inviting as the sheer drop that waited on the other side of this railing. Sweat had broken out on his face, as he stood there and balanced the two choices in his head: jump, or don't jump.

He wasn't contemplating suicide; don't get the wrong idea. He had too much to live for to do that. It was because he had so much to live for that he needed to jump.

He was Tuxedo Mask. Blind or not blind, that was who he was. And Beryl or no Beryl, he was certain in his gut that there would be more enemies. He must be able to fight, to vault and leap no matter how high or wide spaces were. Especially since Serena could no longer transform.

Where better to start than from the familiar leap from his balcony to the next rooftop?

_I don't know,_ sneered his conscience. _Maybe one of those nice low bridges in the park?_

No good. There was nothing to reach for there. There had to be a rooftop across from him. That was the whole point.

So deeply did this conflict immerse him that he did not sense Serena's awareness of his transformation. Even if he had, he probably still would have done what he did next.

Which was climb up on the railing, shakily, tottering, and jump.

There were no words to describe that void. Except maybe "life." Or perhaps it was closer to death.

He was disconnected from everything but the air. In an endless stretch of black nothingness – nothing against his skin but his clothes and the air, nothing before his eyes but nothing. No anchors. It was ecstasy but agony – the indescribable freedom of being only him, in space – the squeezing, crushing panic of whether this second was his last and the sidewalk's hard mitt would replace the air's embrace.

Then he slammed. At least one rib cracked; he heard it. His arm muscles moaned, then silently screeched as he pulled himself up over what was presumably the lip of a roof.

He rolled over on his back and lay there, winced as his panting pulled at his ribs. Okay, so he hadn't jumped quite powerfully enough.

God, how was he going to judge, though? He didn't exactly have a scale to measure how much power his leg muscles put into a jump. Especially in the adrenaline of battle –

_Stop_._ Stop it_, he told himself. He pulled the Golden Crystal out of his pocket and concentrated, focusing on his desire for his rib to mend. Since the Golden Crystal had emerged from his body, he no longer healed automatically. He had to "manually" heal himself with the Golden Crystal. His numerous falls as he adjusted to his new "condition" had provided plenty of opportunities to practice.

His breath was returning, the pain in his torso subsiding. As it faded, he became aware of a tugging.

_Oh, crap._ He dug one hand in his hair angrily and with the other, found the rope.

The relief that flooded back was instantaneous. Ruefully, he realized that it would soon be replaced by fury. He should probably try to get back to his apartment so she wouldn't find out what he had been doing…but when he stood, his legs informed him that they were currently in a gelatinous state and wouldn't be rooftop jumping any time soon.

So he shuffled carefully toward the edge of the roof again and began feeling along the underside. There had to be a fire escape somewhere…

Too bad Serena found it before he did. On his third side of the roof, he heard clattering from his right. Then panting, and at last, the inevitable "Oof!"

"What…pant…happened?" Hands grabbed his shoulders. "Not a…pant…youma?"

He grimaced. "No."

"A dream?" Her voice was puzzled.

To lie or not to lie? he debated. Worried Serena versus angry Serena – angry was definitely better for both of their health. Well, maybe not for his in the short run, but in the long run, definitely.

"I was practicing," he said.

He could almost see her brows furrowing in that way they had. "Practicing what?"

"Jumping."

"Jumping…" Her voice was pensive, meaning she hadn't gotten it yet. "Jumping…JUMPING?"

"I didn't die," he offered.

"Oh my God! _Darien_! You just got home from the _hospital_ – "

His response was logical. "Enemies don't care about that. I've got to be able to fight, Odango."

"Well, yes – maybe – but – argh! Darien, you can't go around jumping off roofs! You can't _see_!"

"Really? I hadn't noticed," he said.

"This is NOT the time to be sarcastic!" He heard the slap of her bare foot stomping the cement. He reached out –

Serena squeaked in alarm when his hand closed around her ankle. "EEK – oh!" She calmed down; she must have seen that it was his hand and not a mutant cockroach holding onto her.

"Why are you running around barefoot?"

"Because _YOU_ WERE PRACTICING JUMPING _OFF ROOFS_!" Serena bellowed. The volume made him wince.

"How hard would it have been to transform while you were running – " Darien cut off, feeling stupid. "Damn," he muttered. "Sorry, Odango, I forgot."

Silence had rebuffed him. This was one of those times when he wished more than anything he could see her. Was she biting her lip to keep from crying? Was she fuming? Was she being patient and mustering up the artificially sunny words to tell him it didn't matter, she wasn't hurt by it?

"Yeah, well, wish I could."

Her bitter murmur had been oddly discomfiting to him. After all the times he told her to stop bottling up her feelings and let her irritation out, now that she had it seemed alien and wrong.

"I'm sorry," he said again.

He heard the whoosh as she shook her head. "It's fine. Forget it. C'mon, let's get you back inside."

She took his arm and led him to the lip of the roof. She hesitated for a moment, trying to decide, he could tell, whether to let him go first or not.

"If you're worried about me looking up your nightgown, I'm blind."

"I wasn't worried about _that_," huffed Serena.

"Well, I am," retorted Darien. "That better not be your short pink one."

Silence answered him.

"I can't believe your father still lets you wear that," Darien said sourly. "You look like such jailbait in that."

"I can't believe you have my nightwear memorized," countered Serena, placing his hands on the fire escape. His face burned, both from her remark and from the fact that he was having to be babied so. "What would my dad say to that, hmm?"

"If he was me, he'd say, serves you right, Odango, for wearing such a short nightgown."

"Please." Serena snorted and nudged him to start moving. He heard the metal groan as she stepped onto the escape. "If you were my dad, I don't think you'd ever let me leave the house."

Darien conceded that this was probably true. However, he did not answer her aloud, concentrating on finding each next rung with his foot. Each time, before finding the next one, his foot groped through empty air for a near-eternity, and his stomach lurched the way it had those first days in the hospital, each time he realized anew that he was really, truly blind. Serena kept up a steady stream of talk above him, however, and that helped.

"Wait – Darien."

They had entered his apartment, and Darien was feeling his way across the living room. At Serena's voice, he paused and turned his face toward her.

"I wish – " she hesitated. "Can't you not?"

"No," said Darien. He did not stop to marvel at how he realized immediately she meant his practicing jumping. Furthermore, he knew that if he said the truth, that he had to jump because he must protect her, she would get angry and worried and guilty. She probably already was, though, because she knew him and would see right through him to why he had to jump. He felt sorry that she had to be so in tune with his emotions.

That feeling of regret was the spark that lit the fire that boiled him hotter and hotter with every step they took. He seethed inside as they walked back to the apartment, her arm around his and leading him around every mere crack in the sidewalk. He hated being so dependent, so helpless. The victory of the night paled in comparison to his overwhelming weakness.

He did not lie down after Serena left, nor did he return to the balcony. He walked instead to his bedroom and punched, over and over again, the punching bag that Asanuma and Motoki had gotten him for Christmas last year. His knuckles began to burn but still the searing helplessness within him did not diminish. He missed the punching bag more and more often, intensifying his frustration. At last he realized his knuckles had bled on the punching bag and made it slippery.

He bent, hands on his knees, barely panting, and withdrew the Golden Crystal from his Sub-Space pocket. He concentrated on his wish to heal, and the pain dimmed, somewhat but not entirely. The Golden Crystal either disliked him or required training to use, because other than that battle with Beryl, it had not fully carried out his wishes one whit.

He gripped the crystal and let his eyelids drift closed. Sleep was the furthest thing from his mind, but it gripped his body before he knew it.

And that was when he was there.

Elysion.

He didn't know it was Elysion at first, of course. At first, he thought he was just dreaming. From the black oblivion of sleep he found himself suddenly on a patch of grass in the middle of a flower-carpeted meadow. Furthermore, he could see this colorful flower-carpeted meadow. He didn't just have the scent of flowers and the taste of a rainbow cloying his phantom senses – he actually, truly, literally _saw_ the meadow. The grass was the yellowish green of lawns in high summer, the flowers red and yellow and blue and purple and even green of all shades.

Therefore, he concluded it had to be a dream.

Yet that sense that gave him the phantom scents and the phantom pressures of footsteps and the flashes of sight when he touched Venus's remains screamed that this was not a dream. It screamed that this was a place he had been before.

He looked down at his hand. There was the crystal that he had been carrying around in his Sub-Space pocket for about a week now, and he was seeing it for the first time. It was large, almost as big as his palm, and spiky, differently-sized prismatic protuberances poking out from every angle so that it looked like a very thick-quilled porcupine. It was hard gold stone whose tips resembled frosted shower doors more than anything else, but closer to its center, where golden light pulsed, it looked more like the magical stone it was.

He stood up, watching the crystal as he did so to gauge any reaction it might display. Nothing happened; it continued its heartbeat-like light pulsing. His eyes abandoned it to look around him.

The land was very flat. It stretched out in all directions, rolling, rolling, rolling green grass that looked as though it had been snowed on by a huge container of ice cream sprinkles. Flowers of every color, shape, and size grew in the area immediately surrounding him, and he assumed that the colors he saw on all the land around were more flowers.

No trees, no bushes. No buildings. No people. Nothing at all but the flowers and a thickly-clouded sky above.

Now that he looked more closely, however, he saw patches where no flowers grew, spots of gray dirt, other spots where the flowers wilted or were completely dead; others whose stems were snapped, some whose petals were slowly twisting off and floating away in a wind he could not feel.

He frowned and crouched down to examine the flowers near him more closely. Bright yellow with the dark center of a black-eyed susan was one, its leaves brushing another flower, a slightly taller carnation. He reached out.

Along his neck rose a fine meadow of hairs, like grass blown upright by a prairie wind. The feeling of being watched was amplified by that sixth sense that superimposed another vision over his eyes – the sight of his own self, dressed in sweats and squatting over red and yellow flowers.

Slowly, he turned. The flowers and grass swayed in a breeze he could not feel. He felt that time slowed as his eyes traveled through the thousands of flowers to the large patch of white that interrupted them. If time had slowed to a trickle then, it totally stopped as he met the blue gaze of a pure white unicorn that stood in the midst of the flowers.

So silent was the air during that meeting of eyes that Darien had fancied he heard the faint whisper of the breeze that caressed the flowers. Yet its voice had been eclipsed by the sudden onslaught of images that whirred through his mind like a fan's blades. Armor, thrones, white, roiling ocean, galloping horses, gold, running children, stars, black soil, a purple Senshi, pale roots, green leaves.

He inhaled and suddenly found himself staring at the ground. His fists were curled into the grass.

He looked up. The spot the unicorn had occupied was empty. A serene cloud drifted by overhead.

The rising of hair on his neck again turned his head. He found the blue eyes again, staring at him from a new position. The unicorn had moved ninety degrees to Darien's right.

His shock dissipating, he was able to absorb the creature's actual appearance. Not only did it have a golden horn protruding from its fair hair, but there were also feathery wings folded against its flanks.

Noting these details required Darien to break the eye contact between himself and the unicorn's blue eyes. Moving his eyes back to its unreadable face, he found its attention no longer on him. It had bowed its behorned head and had stilled, its nose pointed toward a patch of flowers on the ground. Darien could see a glimpse of white and of red.

The unicorn was lifting its head as Darien heard a voice within his mind.

_You have returned, Endymion-sama._

Other people would have found it hard to believe the voice was coming from the unicorn. To Darien, it seemed like the only logical explanation. But he was not so much concerned by the unicorn talking in his mind as he was by what it had called him.

"Not Endymion," he said. "I'm just his reincarnation."

The unicorn's reaction had been hard to describe – yet far more expressive than Darien had expected. There was something about its face that was very eloquent for a horse – Darien hadn't thought that horses had the ability to look heartbroken. Perhaps it came with the wings and the horn. But the way the unicorn looked, at the moment Darien said he wasn't Endymion, reminded Darien of nothing so much as the new kids who had arrived at the orphanage and realized, for the first time, that they weren't going back home.

Ever.

_His reincarnation_, said the unicorn at last. His eyes, light blue, flicked to Darien's hands. _You hold the crystal._

"Um, yeah." Darien gripped it a little more tightly. "Uh – what is this place?" He motioned around him.

The unicorn did not seem to hear him. His head was pointed toward the ground, his eyes directed downward to the carpet of flowers there.

_They have regrown_. His voice was a whisper; Darien could not read the emotion within it. The unicorn lifted his eyes to Darien. _You have all regrown._

Darien returned his gaze with a clueless, apologetic look.

The heartbroken orphan look intensified. _You do not remember._ The voice was weak as a whisper, a wind sighing through the crevices of his brain. _Endymion-sama – this is Elysion. _

_This is your kingdom._

"I'm not Endymion." Darien repeated what was beginning to become a mantra. Here, it was an anchor, because what the unicorn had just told him was a tidal wave of information. "Just his reincarnation. My name's Darien Shields. And yours?"

The unicorn stared at him. God, god, god, that orphaned expression. "You do not remember me."

"Sorry for not remembering someone I've never met," said Darien, sarcasm sharpening his words.

Now a small smile curved the horse lips upward. The first expression of happiness the unicorn had expressed – if a curving upward of lips on a unicorn was a smile. It could just as well be a snarl. "You sound just like him."

Darien shifted. "Do I?" he said.

The unicorn bowed its head. "I am Helios." His horn protruded in front of him, like a sword Darien should draw and wield. "Guardian of your realm Elysion. I beg that you tell me what has transpired in these past one thousand years."

"My realm Elysion, huh?" Darien waited for Helios to lift his head. "I think you have more to tell me than I do to tell you."

One long conversation between them unfolded over the course of several visits to Elysion. That first trip to Elysion had been the shortest; after that, Darien had returned each night, when he fell asleep, to Elysion, and there Helios began to teach him of Elysion, of Endymion, and of how to use the Golden Crystal.

Darien's initial suspicion of all new people was nullified partially by the fact that Helios was a unicorn, not a person, and partially by that same feeling he had that gave him the feeling of phantom pressures and scents, a feeling that said Helios was trustworthy.

He sketched out for Helios the magic-related events of his life, from his first transformations into Tuxedo Mask to the revelation of Sailor Moon's identity to the defeat of Beryl.

The subject of how Darien received the Golden Crystal particularly piqued Helios' interest. Darien understood his interest in the latter, for he really had no idea how he had gotten the crystal, (which, according to Helios, was the crystal not of Earth but of Elysion). There had been that strange limbo where the two voices had been and he had been beaten like a hunk of beef, then thrown through midair. After that, he could remember a nickelodeon of dreams and nightmares, then Serena's voice, but she had said she did not remember talking to him, only the voices.

_The crystal could have been sealed inside your body, I suppose,_ Helios had said, his tone doubtful. _Yet usually the crystal is received…_ He had paused and glanced down at a flower on the ground beside them.

"How?" Darien had prompted. That had been early in their acquaintance, and he had already found by then that Helios had a not quite slow but almost leisurely pace of speech; his words unfolded slowly, like flower petals.

_Some explanation of Elysion is in order here,_ Helios said. _Elysion is the land of dreams. Most have been led to believe that the Golden Crystal is a relic of the Terran kingdom. It is not. What it is is a relic of Elysion. The two are not the same. These flowers you see are not merely flowers. They are the dreams of every being in this universe. Within each flower is contained the method with which to attain one's dream._ He paused, glancing up at the sky.

Darien followed his gaze, but saw nothing. After a moment, Helios lowered his eyes to Darien once more.

_When the being touches their flower, they may obtain these. None enter Elysion save the Golden Crystal's bearer, however,_ he continued_. It was through this method, by touching his dream flower, that those meant for the Golden Crystal obtained it. This event you describe is…_ His mouth turned downward ever so slightly, his gaze clouding over again. _Troubling._

"Could I have come here without realizing it?" Darien had suggested, though the explanation seemed idiotic to him.

Helios shook his head sloooowly. _No. I would have seen. I see all who come here. I have been here these past one thousand years, and none have come save you._

"Can you leave?" Darien had asked, brows furrowed. He couldn't imagine staying in this God-forsaken place alone for a thousand years.

Helios had looked at him. A shadow was in his clear blue eyes though there was no sun to have caused it. _You were dead,_ he said. _Your flower was dead._ He breathed, slow and deep. _Had I been able to leave, there would have been no point._

Darien felt a strange recoiling of his stomach. Helios' words spoke of a deep love that seemed almost repulsive to him. To be so loved by someone he had not even known existed – it made his guts shrivel. Just as the thought of the princess did. Pity and disgust often go hand in hand, and he felt both for Helios.

He shook this away. "How did I get here?"

_Did you fall asleep holding the Golden Crystal?_

Darien had nodded.

_That is how._ Helios rubbed at the soil with a hoof

As for Sailor Moon…

_Sailor Moon? _Helios had looked him head-on, as he rarely did, meeting his eyes._ There is no Senshi of the Moon._

"Of course there is," Darien said. "She's the only one who didn't want to kill me at one point or another."

But Helios was shaking his head. _No,_ he said, and his ears were flat against his skull. _There was no Senshi for the Moon, not when Endymion was alive, not in any story I have heard of history._

"…"

Whether it was out of deference to Darien, the reincarnation of his master, or out of some other motive, Helios did not protest when Darien proposed bringing Serena to Elysion. Darien conceived the notion of bringing Serena to Elysion for her birthday, a present that he was sure would thrill her. (And, of course, there was the little added bonus for himself of being able to see her for the first time in what felt like an eternity…)

Helios did, however, warn him: _None have ever ventured here before save the bearers of the Golden Crystal and the guardians, like myself. Do not expect her to be able to enter._

It was a night a week after he first entered Elysion that Darien enacted the experiment.

He took a deep breath. His nerves were jangling a bit. His body, as he concentrated very hard on _perceiving_ was perhaps too aware of the wind's strength as it whooshed through the balcony railing he perched upon. Had he been listening to too many lifeless objects lately, or was the wind threatening to push him off the railing to the street eighteen stories below?

Again, he felt the urge to transform buck within him. His senses yelled at him to transform; as if a tuxedo would protect him better from splattering on the asphalt than his t-shirt and shorts could.

But if he transformed, Serena would definitely sense him and wake up. And that could not happen tonight, not if his plan was going to work. No transforming.

However, it was also necessary to his plan – okay, not to his plan, but just to his aversion to being stared at by people in the street – that he take the rooftop route to reach her house. This was going to be a little risky, a little more dangerous if he wasn't transformed.

_Yeah, and I think Serena's probably going to sense your utter terror when you plummet eighteen stories to the ground_, said that matter-of-fact part of his brain (the very large part). _I'd rather she sense us transforming and the surprise be ruined than we die._

No, no, no. Darien shook his head at himself, gripping the railing tightly. That wouldn't do. He could make it, he really could. If he could jump across rooftops blind, it couldn't be that much harder to jump across them blind and untransformed.

He was being insane, he realized. So he hastily pushed off from the balcony before his brief lapse into madness ended.

He should have taken a split second to at least measure his jump, he realized once he was already in the air. Oh, well. Too late. All he could do now was hope for the best – he focused, focused, focused – there! The wind here was annoyed because something was blocking its path – he readied legs, bending them, and put his arms in front of him –

Landing!

A bit of stumbling, and he scraped his knee, but not half bad for a blind, untransformed leap between rooftops.

For the next rooftops, he actually focused and prepared – and for the next, and the next, and he made it to the familiar old tree outside Serena's window quite without killing himself.

An amused sense, warm like sunshine on a leaf, touched him as he reached an arm out to steady himself against the tree's trunk. He pressed his palm against the rough wood, feeling its amusement increase. The tree was laughing at him, he was pretty sure. It wasn't the first time he'd felt emotions from the tree – or from any plants for that matter. They were the only objects – other than humans – from which he sensed actual emotions: sadness, amusement, dismay. He had decided that perhaps ecopaths really did exist and that he was one. Or maybe only Golden Crystal carriers, or Earth royalty.

However, it was too late at night to tangle his brain in more attempts to understand his strange life. He saved that for daylight.

Carefully, he brushed the rope with the very tip of his finger. The tranquility of sleep rose up and down in time to the pulse in his fingertip.

Thankfully, the window was unlocked. Along with gratefulness came the usual irritation. _God, Serena, if a blind person can jump in through your window, what's to stop a youma, or a crazed cat?_ He slid into the room quietly, feeling very clunky in his normal sneakers instead of the unbelievably stealthy shoe-boots Tuxedo Mask wore.

Though he now knew the layout of her room like the back of his hand, he shuffled across the carpet very carefully and quietly. This latter part was hard because all manner of noisy things littered her floor – crumpled-up papers, empty potato chip bags, dog-eared manga, he identified from their sounds just from the window to the bed.

When he reached the head of her bed, his fingers were as gentle in finding her face as they had been in touching the rope. With his free hand, he pulled out the Golden Crystal. _He_ could do it without the Golden Crystal if he was sleeping, but he didn't know it she would be able to. Indeed, he didn't know if she would be able to at all; that was why he was trying this now, instead of trying on her birthday and looking like an idiot if it didn't work.

Still with one hand touching her face, he gripped the Golden Crystal and concentrated. Concentrated…

_Endym – Darien-sama?_

Darien's grip loosened on the crystal. He opened his eyes and saw the familiar flowered landscape. "Helios."

The unicorn spread his wings slightly, then sank into a bow amidst the flowers he had been tending. _Prince._ He lifted his head again, eyes flicking from Darien to the golden-haired girl beside him. _Is that…?_

"Serena," Darien said, almost happily. Glee filled him like air filled a balloon. It had worked! He could bring Serena to Elysion! It worked it worked it worked he could see her now

_Prince,_ said Helios, and Darien would have noticed the odd note in his voice had he not been so pleased with himself and everything in the whole world –

Except then Serena began to stir. Panic exploded in his veins; she couldn't wake up now, it would ruin the surprise! Quickly, he touched her forehead again, threw a "Goodbye!" over his shoulder to Helios, and sank himself and Serena out of Elysion hastily. Then he leapt under her bed, stifling a curse as he hit a chunky-heeled shoe that she must have lost under it.

Not a moment too soon, however. He heard the mattress rustle as Serena moved.

"…Darien…?" Her voice was groggy; he heard her turn over, then sit up. "Is that…" she trailed off, yawning. Then, he supposed, not seeing him anywhere, she sank back down, for he felt the pressure exerted on the mattress in his mind.

Soon soft snores filled the room. Darien grinned tightly and waited a few more minutes still before wriggling back out from under the bed. Victory, victory, victory.

Stopping only to place a hand on her hair before leaving, he leapt back out the window and hopped home without stumbling even one single time.

Elysion, indeed, was like the glow of an approaching dawn on the horizon of Darien's life. In the brief, surreal moments of sight it allowed him, in the growing control Helios taught him to exert over the Golden Crystal, even the heightened senses he had gained – a power that Helios called psychometry. It made being blind so much more manageable; he was able to hear and feel things so that he could detect them as clearly as if he had seen them, and thus avoid encountering them. Helios also taught him that the headaches and itching that had began to plague him were results of his empathetic rapport with the planet – being its prince – and how to build shields in his mind to block them from physically manifesting themselves. Along the way, he was sure to remind Darien that this was only a temporary measure and that the only way to rid them for real was to heal the planet of the wounds humans had inflicted upon her.

In this way, and in others, Elysion was also a burden – the coming of day also signified for Darien the beginning of a new chapter in his life, and the end of an old one. Elysion showered down upon him all of the worries and responsibilities of a planet's ruler – like the constant awareness of how the earth was slowly being killed by lumberers and oil sheiks – and yet another hostile mind toward Serena.

Well, not hostile, exactly. But Helios had made it clear, however submissively, that he did not trust Serena. He was keeping something to himself about it.

In the end, Elysion was, more than anything, a sanctuary, and this would be how Darien would use it an increasingly greater frequency during the next few years of his life. The first instance of this came that night in his apartment, when he answered the door.

L

_Endym – Darien-sama?_

Darien blinked up at the winged unicorn. "Someone just showed up at my apartment and knocked me out!" Disbelief and indignation mingled in his voice.

"You are not injured." Using his horn, Helios gently pushed back Darien's hair, presumably checking for any bumps on his head, then checked his neck.

Darien waved him off, standing up.

_An inhaled method of rendering people unconscious?_  
"Maybe," said Darien. "But why?" He frowned. "Do I come here when I'm unconscious instead of sleeping, too?"

_I would not know, Darien-sama,_ said Helios. _I have never been a Golden Crystal Bearer before. It seems plausible._

"Can I get back by doing the same thing, then?" murmured Darien. He closed his eyes, focusing…

L

"Shields? Hey, Shields? C'mon, man…"

Darien opened his eyes and sure enough, there was blackness. "_Lita_?" he demanded. "Were you the one who knocked me out?" It wouldn't be the first time a Senshi had laid him flat…

"Why would I waste the time to come knock you out in the middle of the night when I could have done it six hours ago?" retorted Lita's voice. He felt her slinging his arm over her shoulders and he shook her off as he had shaken off Helios mere moments ago.

"I'm fine," he said.

"Then what were you doing lying on the floor? Here, this way – no, that's the couch – "

"I _know_ it's the couch." Darien felt acid on his tongue. "Why are you here?"

"Not in the hopes of receiving any gratitude, that's for sure," he heard her mutter. "Serena sensed something weird through your link. She tried to come, but her parents caught her trying to sneak out, so she called me and asked me to come check up on you. Good thing, too, if someone had seen you laid out like that they would've called the cops. What happened?"

"I have no idea." Darien dug a hand in his hair, sat on the lovechair's arm. "Someone knocked on the door, I figured it was Toki – "

"Yeah, he always forgets something, doesn't he?" said Lita with a fond note in her voice.

Darien glowered. "Hello, discussing my unconsciousness here, not Toki's loveable qualities. I thought it was him, so I opened the door. Someone – not Toki – said my name, I asked who it was, he or she started to say something, and then I was out."

He heard a scritch-scratch sound of her picking at her tiara and realized that Lita must here in her Sailor Jupiter transformation. Of course, to jump the rooftops. It cheered him a little to think of how he could jump rooftops untransformed and she couldn't.

"Any idea who it could have been?" she asked.

He frowned again. "Whoever it was sounded familiar."

"Rei or Ami?" Lita suggested.

Darien grimaced. "No, I would have recognized _their _voices…Luna's too." He bared his teeth unconsciously, then remembered that Luna's corpse – as of yesterday- had been lying on a sidewalk.

"How DID they knock you out, anyways?"

"I don't know. He - " He caught himself quickly before he blurted out Helios' name, disgusted that he'd been so careless. " – or she must have done something strange, because I don't hurt anywhere."

"If it was ME – and I'm not saying it was," Lita added, "I would have gone for your pressure points if I wanted you out quick."

"Yeah, but I didn't feel anything there before I blacked out, and furthermore, if they wanted me out quick, why did they leave me lying in the doorway?" Darien said. "Is anything missing from my apartment?"

He heard Lita move around. 'TV's still here, so's your microwave, all your furniture, the fridge, the oven, the lamps, your stereo system and DVD player – " She paused. "Am I allowed to check the bedroom?"

"Nothing in there's worth stealing unless they're a criminal bookworm," said Darien, too preoccupied to rise to her bait. "Has anything strange happened lately? Youma-wise?"

"God, I hope not." He heard her blow out a breath. "Luna would know, I guess…"

"Dammit, you're right," Darien muttered. She would, but she was dead. Dead cats tell no tales…should he tell Lita that Buji had seen Luna's corpse? Not yet; he had to think first. Make no decisions in the middle of the night; you can't trust them. An excuse, then. "I'm not taking Serena near her, though."

"Why not?" He heard a pop as Lita opened a can of soda, which she'd undoubtedly gotten from _his _fridge. "She doesn't seem to have it out for her anymore, otherwise she wouldn't have tried to get Serena to rejoin the Senshi again."

She was referring to Luna's visit to the hospital on Serena and Darien's second to last day. Luna had told Serena that she would accept her back as the leader of the Senshi if she renounced her alliance with the reincarnation of the heir to the Terran throne – a.k.a., Darien. Serena had refused.

"Don't care," said Darien, and ended that train of the conversation. "That better not be a Mountain Dew you're drinking."

"So what if it is?" Lita challenged, but continued seriously, "So what now? You want a bodyguard for the rest of the night?"

"No thanks," said Darien.

"Fine, but Serena's gonna kill both of us if anything happens to you."

"I'll take care of Serena," said Darien. He transformed into Tuxedo Mask and balanced his cane across his knees, releasing its blade. "You get going. You're going to need all the sleep you can get if this ends up being more youma."

"You kidding?" He heard the rattle as Lita swung a leg onto the balcony railing. "At this hour all I'm gonna be able to get is a _catnap_."

"Ha ha." He propped a pillow behind his back. "Hey, Kino."

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming."

L

Darien awoke the next morning to a tickling on his nose. He jerked upright, sneezing, and cracked his forehead against something hard.

"Damn!" he gasped, at the same time as a familiar voice said, "OW!" – then, "_Darien_!"

"A guy's got a right to curse when he wakes up half-suffocated by hair." Darien winced, rubbing his skull. "What are you doing here, Serena?"  
"Well, that's a dumb question." He heard the blanket whisper as she perched on the edge of the couch cushion. Her voice was a little muffled; she must be rubbing her nose the way she had so many times after colliding with his torso.

"What _happened_ last night?"

Her urgent voice tugged him from his reminiscence. Propped up on his elbows, he rubbed the bridge of his nose for a second and then nudged her with his knee. He waited a moment after he felt her small weight disappear from the cushion to swing his legs out from under the blanket and sit up. He stood and walked to the bedroom, hands in front fo him. He felt her follow him.

"You're trying to figure out how best to put it."

Darien felt a small thumping. "Are you tapping your foot impatiently at me?"

"Yes" was her reply. "You're trying to edit the story so it's child-safe for me."

Darien added another phantom-feel to the tally in his head and stood. "I really don't know what happened, Odango. The doorbell rang, I went to answer it, and next thing I was being woken up by Lita." His fingers found a t-shirt hanging on his desk chair; he pulled it on. "Did you sense anything?"

"Something…woke me up," she said. She was talking slowly, dragging her words out. She was saying he was the one who planned to hide the story from her – which he had been, but whatever – but she was the one hiding something from him! "I was falling asleep…"

"What aren't you telling me, Odango?" he said, lifting his eyebrows in the gesture he'd begun to learn had the magical power of always making her come clean.

He could sense her fidget; he could SENSE it. He stalked towards her, heard the padding of her feet backwards. Heard her back thunk against the wall, the rustle of her hair as she looked askance back at the wall. Thank God, thank GOD he had gotten to know Serena so well before he'd gone blind. He think he'd go crazy without being able to visualize so clearly as he could always see her in his mind's eye.

"But it's so embarrassing!" Serena howled. "Can't we just gloss over it?"

"Odango, you know we gave up any rights to dignity when we became friends."

"I don't remember signing any contracts!" Serena retorted.

"Trying to change the subject…" His voice was knowing as he exited the room, hand again loosely held up to make sure he didn't hit the wall.

"Fine!" Serena's foot made a little stomp. "I was holding onto the rope, okay!"

This made Darien stop. He paused, his hand rested atop the couch. "Why?"  
"I just do." Serena's voice, her words, were prying open something inside him. "It makes me feel calm."

Him, make her feel calm? Darien's mind flitted over all the ugly, dark thoughts it had harbored in the past month, and he faltered. She'd felt all that? No, no, if she'd felt it she would have said something, she'd be trying to make him feel better –

"How so?" he asked, and his voice was as calm as his insides were not.

She squirmed. "Just…you, I guess. I don't hold it tightly, just really lightly, not enough to get anything specific."

"And how did I feel?"

"Like you." At his lip twitch, she elaborated. "Worrying. Paranoid. Grumpy. Sleepy. You feel nice when you're sleepy." She stopped suddenly. "Oh my God, I can't believe we're having this conversation!" She sounded mortified.

"That coming from a girl who was just in my bedroom," said Darien to cover his own feelings.

"Shields!"

"Fine, fine. What alerted you that something was wrong?"

There was a pause, probably her blinking at such a quick turnabout in conversation.

"I'm not sure," she said. She sounded as though she had just realized this. "Just – it did. I didn't stop to think about why; I just got out of bed. Then my parents came in – "

"Why do I get the feeling you didn't so much get out of bed as fall out of it with a crash?" said Darien. Serena's self accounts, he had found, often required some reading between the lines.

"Okay, well maybe I made a little thump," said Serena defensively. "But I couldn't leave the house after they were all alart, obviously. So after they went back to their bed, I used te Luna Pen to turn invisible and sneak down to the kitchen to call Lita."

"Why didn't you just turn insivible to sneak ut of the house?"

"Oh." Serena frowned. "I didn't think of that."

Darien laughed a little despite himself. "I'm surprised Kino didn't point it out to you. Though on second thought, she wouldn't want you risking your neck for me."

"You weren't mean to her, were you?" Serena's voice held reproof.

"Am I ever mean?" Darien made his slow, groping way to the kitchen counter. Serena's hand slid into his elbow halfway there and sat him down on a stool.

"Hmm, should I really answer that?"

"As long as you remember whose ice cream it is you've been monopolizing," Darien replied. He got up again to get himself a bowl of cereal (he hadn't wanted to hurt Serena's feelings by not sitting down where she led him), but Serena pushed him back down.

"I'll get breakfast," she said. "What would you like? Eggs? Scrambled? Sunny side-up?"

"How about recognizable?" said Darien, who had once walked into Serena's Home Ec class before he lost his vision. They had been making eggs, and Serena's he had mistaken for a black washcloth before being informed they were the eggs she had cooked. "I'd rather just have cereal, thanks."

"But I want to make something to make it up to you!" Serena protested. "Since I didn't come last night."

"How about this?" Darien said. "Motoki didn't come last night either, so how about he gives me breakfast? That work for you? Works for me. Okay, let's go."

He pushed her out the door – but being unable to see, he missed a little bit, and there was a thunk.

"OW!"

"Oh my god." Darien let out a hiss and lowered Serena to the floor. "What's wrong? Are you okay? Can you see?" His hands roved across her face gingerly, trying to find where he had hit her.

There was a small laugh from beneath his hands, warm breath tickling his palm. "I'm really starting to look like an abused wife."

"I am so sorry." Darien felt absolutely horrible, a simmering cocktail inside his gut like whiskey and soda and coffee all boiling together in a nauseuous mass. "I shouldn't have – "

"Darien, you're talking to the klutz of Juuban." Serena's hand was on his face, now, just as he had removed his from hers, feeling as though he had no right to touch her, the one he had hurt. Her fingers curved around his cheek, and the millsecond he realized he was leaning into the touch, he stiffened.

"Hey." Her other hand slid around the other side of his face. "What's wrong? Darien, it was just an accident! An accident!"

"I know." He moved his head out her hands, voice muffled. He stood, lifting her with him. A smile curved his lips, softening his face, molded especially for her. "How about I make it up to you with breakfast at Toki's?"

There was a short moment of silence. Darien kept the smile tacked firmly upon his face though each second ticked by was like a bead of sweat trickling down his back. At last, Serena let go of his shirt. "Okay."

He sighed, thankful she had fallen for it. Or let it go.

Whichever.

L

"Well, Serena-chan's birthday's coming up, isn't it?" Asanuma waved his straw in inspiration. "So we'll have a party!"

"I'll have to start working on my parents now to get them to let me have the arcade for an afternoon," mused Motoki.

"Not here!" Asanuma shook his head as though Motoki was crazy. "At my house. We'll have a pool party!"

"You have a pool?" Lita said.

"Numa's rich," Motoki informed her. "Couldn't you tell from his car?"

"Darien's got a car, too," Asanuma said petulantly.

"Yeah, but at least his isn't as showy."

"Hello?! That's because he has a motorcycle, too! Besides, he's richer than my whole family, pick on him instead."

"Darien's loaded?" Lita's forehead wrinkled.

"Heck yeah he's loaded!" Asanuma exclaimed. "Have you seen his apartment?"

"Oh, yeah, I go there every night," Lita said sarcastically. "No, I haven't seen his apartment, you dummy."

"That's what I like about you, Lita," Asanuma said, placing a hand over his heart. "You're so good at giving Motoki heart attacks."

Lita looked over at Motoki, who was indeed gasping for breath after he'd choked on a fry. "You believed me?' she demanded.

"No, of course not!" He insisted, but his face burned a bright red. "This is just a very salty French fry!"

"Not like Darien would have her anyways," remarked Asanuma, building a house with his cards.

Lita snorted. "Thanks a lot."

Asanuma pointed a finger at her. "Look, you and me both know that Darien's only got eyes for one girl. And she's short, blonde, and happy. Like, your exact opposite."

"Lita's happy," said Motoki. He put an arm around Lita's waist. "When she's with me."

"Ha ha ha, very slick," muttered Asanuma as Lita and Motoki locked goo-goo eyes. "Really, you're like a road in winter."

"ANYWAYS!" he said loudly, breaking them up. "We must plan. I'm inviting more than just you mushy lot, since I'll just be a fifth wheel – but since we're not in your grade, Lita, I don't know who all she dislikes that I shouldn't invite."

Lita thought about it. "That's a pretty nonexistent list. I can't think of anyone Serena doesn't like."

"Yeah, that's cause she's an actress," Asanuma said dismissively, flicking his house of cards so that it tumbled down in a blizzard of suits. "We'll just ask Darien, then – "

"I think I know more than Darien about who Serena likes and dislikes," Lita said, lips pursing.

"Uh, doubt that. But you're welcome to share notes."

"It's probably best to just invite everybody," Motoki said before Lita could karate chop Asanuma. "If someone got left out, Serena would feel worse than if someone she didn't like was there."

Asanuma and Lita both grunted unhappily. How come Motoki was always right?

"We don't need Darien, then," said Asanuma. "Speaking of whom, should he be told of the party or not?"

"No time to answer that question now." Lita's eyes were on the window. "Here they come. Look normal!"

Asanuma resumed building his house of cards, whistling, and Motoki busied himself with shake glasses.

L

"We need to talk to Lita," Serena said as the noise level grew louder, signaling they were coming in for a landing at the arcade. "She'll want to know what we talked about."

"You holding onto the rope every night to go to sleep?" said Darien, lifting a brow.

"You tell her that and you'll be the one getting killed, not me," said Serena in an unconcerned voice. She had a blush, however, that Darien was almost certain of from the faint phantom feeling of heat beneath his skin.

However, he conceded that she was right. "It's not as though we came up with any new ideas, though."

"Yeah, well." Serena rocked back on her heels for a moment; he heard the pattering and raucous laughter of kids racing past them. "She'll want to know anyway; you – "

"Know her," Darien finished in unison with her. "Yes. Nosy Kino."

"Hey, hey." Serena squeezed his arm, not painfully, but not playfully either. "She didn't have to come over to drag you out of the hallway last night."

A little shame wormed through Darien. "I know," he protested awkwardly, like a child to his mother. "I thanked her."

"Well, good. I'm proud of you." Serena squeezed his arm again, warmly this time. "Here we are. Senses on full alert. Kids are crawling all over the place."

"It's not kids I'm worried about, it's Asanuma." Darien got wedged between a set of chairs Serena had slid easily through and grimaced, red tinting his face. He grunted his way out and tried to continue as though nothing had happened. "He's planning something."

"Maybe he set up those chairs as a trap for you." Serena's voice held laughter.

"Just because you've got the stature of an anorexic leprechaun doesn't mean the rest of us do," Darien retorted.

"Aren't wide hips ideal for child-bearing?" asked Serena slyly.

"Don't bring up child-bearing to me, you perverted minor." Darien's cheeks still held a faint pink beneath his pale skin. "And don't pair my advanced vocabulary with Asanuma-like humor."

"Why, because then it's like you and Asanuma had a kid?" Serena was on a roll, and she was enjoying it.

"Mmmpphh." Darien grunted and pulled away from her, stabbing the air in front of him with the cane he rarely used. He heard a yelp as it collided with something; he winced.

"You're lucky that was my leg, Shields," came Lita's familiar, caustic voice. "Or I'd kick you out for assaulting customers."

"I can see at least three girls at the counter alone who would pay good money to get harassed by Darien."

Darien inhaled. "Asanuma…"

"Shutting up, shutting up!" Asanuma's voice was just as bouncy as him. "May I lead you to your seat, m'lady?"

"Why, certainly, honorable sir." Darien heard Serena's hand slip into Asanuma's and felt the slight spray of saliva as she "thbbb" ed her tongue at him.

"Say it, don't spray it, Odango," he said. "Toki's trying to keep this a sanitary facility."

"Then what's a dirty mind like mine doing here, hmm?" Asanuma again.

"You're like the bacteria in our lower intestines." Darien lowered himself into an empty stool. "Disgusting but necessary."

"Wow, you really warmed him up today, Serena." A clunk of a mug landing in front of Darien – coffee. He took a sip, frowning as he did so. It just wasn't as sweet as Mountain Dew, and he refused to take it the girly cream-saturated way Asanuma did. "Are you mad at the galaxy today, Dare, or just the world?"

At this, Darien had to hide a smile. The irony in that statement tickled him pink. "How about the solar system?" he said.

"Seems a little unambitious for you," commented Lita's voice. She had apparently moved over to them. Serena had told him that she wore an apron like Motoki's when she worked at the arcade, and the thought of her in that ridiculous apron always made him feel a little gleeful, especially since he didn't have to weat it. Serena, sensing this emotion from him for the first time – when she first told him about Lita in the apron – had turned and asked him what was wrong. Glee, it appeared, was not an emotion she had ever sensed before or expected of him, and she asked him to feel it as little as possible, because it was a little creepy.

"An arcade waitress calling me unambitious." Darien smirked at his own little ironic statement. "That's one I've never heard before."

"Is someone insulting my arcade?" Motoki floated over, like a butterfly to the swarm.

"Tsk, tsk, Toki," said Asanuma's voice. "What would your father say if he heard you calling the arcade yours?"

"He can't get mad over what he doesn't know," returned Motoki. "Morning, Dare. Usa. You guys here for breakfast today?"

"Yes," said Darien.

"The usual?"

"Yes, please," said Serena, but Darien grunted. "More coffee," he said.

Lita, Motoki, and Asanuma exchanged glances.

"Not Mountain Dew?" asked Lita with a raised eyebrow, ignoring the jab in the stomach Motoki gave her frantically.

"Is it suddenly illegal to drink coffee?" said Darien.

"It should be, considering the breath it gives you," said Serena quietly. Lita caught a glimpse of a small smile beneath the grown-out golden bangs.

"And have you been smelling Darien's breath lately, Serena-chan?" asked Asanuma, waggling his eyebrows.

"Motoki, I'm planning to take my business elsewhere," Darien threatened.

"Oh, please, like you guys ever pay for anything around here anyways," said Lita, crossing her arms.

"Hey, they can't help it if my dad loves Usa-chan," Motoki said, bringing back the frosty milkshake and steaming coffee.

"And what's Darien's excuse?"

Asanuma grinned. "Hey, Darien can't help it if Toki's mom has a crush on him."

"Ew. EwewewewewewEW!" Motoki ground his hands into his ears as the rest of the group laughed – well, Darien smirked. "Never EVER connect my mother and Darien in that way again! Gross!"

"Like it's any less gross for you to connect your dad and Serena," said Asanuma.

Motoki yelped. "I didn't mean it that way!"

"Suuuure you didn't," said Asanuma. He elbowed Darien. "C'mon, Dare-Bear, aren't you a little suspicious of Motoki's dad's adoration of Serena?"

Darien lowered his mug from his lips. "I could say that no one can help but adore the Odango," he said slowly. The eyes of every single person in the arcade widened to inhuman proportions, and they all leaned in to listen.

"But," he finished, "that wouldn't be true, so I'll just settle for admitting that Motoki's father intimidates me and if he likes Odango, well, that's his business."

"Oooohhh." Everyone sighed in disappointment and wilted in their seats.

"Don't listen to him, Serena-chan!" cried Asanuma passionately, covering Serena's ears with his hands and hugging her head to him. "No one in this world can resist your adorableness!"

Lita thought that maybe this was a little whopperish of Asanuma to say, considering the girl he had a crush on had hated Serena's guts, but whatever. Time to rescue Serena from the fruity boy's clutches.

"Okay, Numa, time to let go," she said.

Asanuma blinked at her, still hugging Serena's head. Serena's cheeks were turning a little pink.

"Lita," he said, "If Buji came in here with an incredibly cute teddy bear, would you make him let go of it just because you wanted to hug it yourself?"

Lita regarded him stonily. "Teddy bears don't do it for me."

"Serena is just the same," continued Asanuma, paying not a whit of attention to what she had said. "I realize that you want to hug her, too, but you just have to wait your turn – argck!"

"Turn over," said Darien simply, placing his cane back on his lap. "Serena, how many times have I told you not to put up with sexual harassment like that from Asanuma?"

"I resent that," said Asanuma petulantly, rubbing his armpit where Darien had jabbed him.

Serena flattened her grown-out bangs against her face from where they'd gotten rumpled and smiled. "If he'd actually been sexually harassing me, he wouldn't have a gender anymore right now."

They all laughed.

L

Kisenian Blossom licked her lips. It was something she did habitually when close to prey, and she had become accustomed to feeling the being she had possessed imitate her motion – yet she did not feel the phantom sensation of the alien licking his own lips.

Irritation swirled within her. It was not a difficult beast to awaken within her, even less so because it had reared up so recently, when her first attempt on Endymion had failed.

The whole mission had begun auspiciously enough – who would have imagined stumbling across an alien who had befriended Endymion? It had certainly not been planned. Moreover, an alien who had seemed so perfectly pliable, so timid.

But all since then had begun to twitch from the path, just centimeter by centimeters, but those acculumated centimeters were beginning to bother her, as though she was being totally directed from her path. First the aliens related to the one she possessed followed her to Earth – she had ignored them instead of killing them, deciding that the energy-draining attacks they planned on the Terrans would distract any suspicion from the comet she was bringing to the planet. Next the alien proved harder to control than she had thought, bucking constantly under her power. She had him reined in now, but it made her uneasy.

Then, topping it all off, Endymion had somehow escaped her grasp the night before.

Underestimation, she supposed, had been her downfall. She had brushed off the potential risk the human could be because he was only a reincarnation – and a young one, at that. She had not expected him to be able to combat her formidable power – which she was still sure he would not have been able to do – not had she expected him to have the knowledge to dodge it.

And yet dodged it he had. Her aura had touched his, and then his soul was gone. The body left lying in the hall of the building had been an empty shell, of no use to her – not even as a vessel, for she needed a dream to latch onto and feed off of.

He had fled to Elysion. That was the only explanation she saw. She had underestimated him, had assumed that even if he did have the knowledge to reach Elysion, he would not recognize her aura to flee there – for she had not encountered him in Endymion's life, had not even been alive then.

Today was different, though. Today she was not going in as an assassin from behind his back but instead approaching from the front. She would not attempt to club him over the proverbial head with a club but instead try to ease him over to her, using the alien, of course, as bait.

L

One of the best qualities of friends are how they can make the rest of the world melt away and envelope you in a sheltered world that consists only of laughter and warmth. But few things in life are not double-edged swords, and the other end of the friendship sword took a whack at the group upon this occasion.Their gibes made Darien forget he was blind and Serena forget the scars lashing her face, but they also made them totally oblivious to the figure that approached behind them.

Unexpectedly enough, it was Asanuma who stopped laughing first and saw the man.

"Hi," he said. "Toki, you've got a customer."

"Oh, that's not necessary," said the man, and this was when Darien stopped laughing – stopped moving, practically. Serena saw the shuttering over of his face and slid from her seat to stand. Whether it was instinct, Senshi senses, or her rapport with Darien that made her move between Darien and the newly-arrived man she were never quite sure. But what the man said next confirmed that her action had been the right one.

"I'm just here for Darien."

Asanuma opened his mouth, then closed it. His brows knitted for a moment, then he waggled them at Darien. "Ooh, Dare-Bear. You didn't tell us you had a hunk in hiding."

"Hunk" was not the word Serena would have used, and a quick flick of eyes with Lita confirmed her friend was thinking the same thing. The man was tall with what could be termed a mullet, a deep auburn that curled over his purple collar. (Darien had had a purple shirt like that once, but Serena had banished it from his closet, declaring it, along with a horrible olive-colored jacket, too hideous for the planet, much less its ruler.) The mullet half-hid the man's eyes, and he had a very pointed chin.

This appraisal took a few seconds; then Serena wondered why Darien had not spoken. Neither she nor the others had spoken, expecting him to say something that would explain the newcomer to them, but he was still quite still and pale. His expression was hidden by the hair that fell over his face; Serena wanted very badly to brush it aside and see what he was thinking, but in the heaviness of the man's presence, she dared not. How was he exerting such a stormcloud over the atmosphere?

She reached, very subtly, for the rope. Her figners brushed it, but her lips compressed. Something was wrong. Something foreign in Darien – something groping, writhing, perfumed.

Serena felt air beneath her feet suddenly. A stinging on her cheek announced its presence to her loudly.

There was just enough time to realize she'd been backhanded before her butt hit the floor. The impact punched a whoosh of air from her lungs.

Action exploded immediately; the others had seen what Serena, absorbed in the rope, had not: the man had suddenly slapped her, hard, sending her flying.

"What's the idea, pal?" Motoki and Lita both rapidly had a handful of the man's collar in their fists. Asanuma stood in front of Serena, legs shoulder-width apart and arms up.

Serena scrambled to her feet. "I'm okay." Asanuma threw out an arm, holding her back as she started toward Darien. "Numa – "

"Just let us handle this for a minute, okay, Serena-chan?" Asanuma's hand closed around her wrist, and he pushed her back behind him.

Serena frowned but subsided, reaching for the rope again. The strange feeling in Darien was still there. Quickly, before she could debate over it, she began to pull at it, ripping it out like weeds from a garden.

A sudden thump distracted her from it, but most of the alien feeling was gone anyway. She blinked, looked up, and saw Motoki stumbling backward. The man's arm was outstretched as though he'd shoved him away. His other hand was locked in Lita's, grappling. Something even more violent may have happened, or so the gleam in Lita's eyes predicted, had Darien not stood suddenly.

"Fiore!" he said, and the reproach was barely detectable in his voice beneath the shock that saturated it.

"Darien!" The abrupt little-boy exuberance of the man's voice clenched Serena's stomach. "You remember!" He paused, eyeing Darien from Lita's grip. Darien's black hair still hung over his eyes like curtains. "Won't you look at me?"

"I can't." Darien took a half-step forward, his hand sweeping the air beside him slowly. "Serena?"

Now he was the one who sounded like a little boy, uncertain and with mounting panic.

Serena pushed past Asanuma's arm. "Over here." When Asanuma reached to block her again, she grasped his hand instead and kept it firmly in hers, her eyes glued intently on the scene unfolding before them.

"What happened?" Darien asked. He was looking in a place a little to the right of her.

Before any of them could answer his question, the man had suddenly escaped Lita's hold and stood directly before Darien. His hand flashed up and swept the bangs from Darien's eyes in a familiar gesture that made Asanuma's hand twitch in Serena's. Darien's eyes shone gold out of his face, pupil-less and sightless.

"Your eyes!" gasped the man – Fiore. "What did they do to them?!"

"_They_ didn't do anything," began Darien, and he may have said something more, but Serena didn't hear it because she was suddenly shoved to the floor again. Rolling to absorb the impact and return to her feet as Lita and experience had taught her, she saw that Fiore had Asanuma with his arms locked behind him and his face close to his ear.

"Was it you?" he demanded. "Did you do it?!"

Serena seized his arm, prying his fingers from Asanuma. "Let him go!" she grunted.

"Or was it you?" the man spun easily out of his grip on Asanuma to latch onto her. His breath was humid in her ear. He sucked in a breath suddenly; her hair was suctioned away from her neck. "_You _were the one who broke my hold – "

"Get off."

Serena's head snapped up to find Darien's chin inches from her eyeball. His golden eyes were burning at Fiore.

The arms gripping hers let go. Just like that.

"We'll talk later," said Fiore's voice, except that it was different – throatier? He took a step, then another, and then was somehow gone from the arcade.

Serena blinked, once twice.

"Are you okay?" Darien's hand encircled her arm like a vice. His head was turned toward the door, but she knew his attention was on her.

"'m okay," she heard herself say. "What about you?"

He merely shook his head, shrugging her off. She grabbed his shirt and stood up on her tiptoes. "Something was wrong with you! I felt it! He was doing something to you, wasn't he?"

"What the hell was that?" Asanuma's voice broke Serena's hold on Darien. He moved away from her but kept a hand around her arm.

"I'm calling the police." Motoki vaulted the counter, striding rapidly to the telephone on the back wall.

"No," said Darien.

"What the hell, Darien?" demanded Asanuma. "You knew that guy!"

"When I was six," Darien said, and silence slammed down upon them like a huge book being closed. Six was the age at which Darien had gotten in a car crash, lost his parents and his memory, and gone to an orphanage. _No one_ ever asked Darien about those days. "He was at the hospital with me for several days."

"And so, what, he came to put us in the hospital?" Motoki, usually so unflappable, was still angry, his forehead furrowed into canyons by the tight knit of his brows. "He threw Serena on the floor – _twice_!"

"I don't know," said Darien, his voice flat. "But if you call the police, they're going to want to question Serena and I again. She is _not _going through that. Got that?" he said more loudly, turning around to face the arcade, half of which had watced the last fifteen minutes' events avidly.

A few people lowered their cell phones; nearly all nodded. Serena watched them all and felt something buzzing in her bones. Had Darien used magic just then?

"Darien, you're an idiot," Motoki said, his voice hard as granite.

Darien turned back to face the apron-clad teen. "If he comes in here again, you can do whatever you want," he said. "But I promise you he won't. I'll deal with it."

The anger on Motoki's face flickered to worry. "Darien, don't you go doing anything stupid…"

A faint smile touched Darien's lips. "That's like telling Odango not to do anything graceful."

"I resent that," said Serena. "Just for the record."

"Noted and ignored," said Darien. "Lita?"

"Got it."

Asanuma and Motoki looked back and forth between them. Motoki's forehead wrinkled anew. "You know I hate it when you guys don't tell us stuff."

But Darien and Serena had already left the arcade.

L

They gathered at ten-thirty. Lita arrived on the tree branch outside Serena's window first. Serena pushed open the door for her quietly though there was really no need: Sammy always listened to music very loud on his headphones to go to sleep, and her mother and father slept with a TV on in their room. They'd on;y been awakened the nght before because of the crash she made as she fell out of bed.

Lita – well, Sailor Jupiter because she was transformed in order to jump – eyed the object in Serena's hand dubiously. "Are you sure you don't want to piggyback?"

"Nope, nope, I have to work around not being able to transform." Serena shook her head resolutely and took a deep breath, gripping the roll of duct tape in her hand tightly.

Jupiter bit her tongue and forced herself not to interfere as Serena climbed tenaciously out the window and up the wall.

"If you fall doing this, Shields'll hang me with my own guts," said Jupiter unhappily.

"Then I'll haunt him," replied Serena cheerfully. "Ugh…ugh!" She hoisted herself up onto the roof with a triumphant grunt. "Victory!"

"I get the feeling climbing down is going to be more dangerous," muttered Jupiter as she flexed her leg muscles and pushed into a single graceful jump that landed her on the roof beside Serena. "THAT's what you're doing with that?"

Taping her slippered-feet down on the roof, Serena glanced up at her. She had a piece of torn duct tape ready in her teeth. "Good idea, huh?" Except that talking made her lips move and touch the duct tape – which promptly adhered to them.

"Oh, no," Jupiter groaned.

Serena's eyes widened, but she laughed, shaking it off. "Oh, it'll come off…" She tugged at it with a hand.

"Umph!" Tears welled up in her eyes. And the duct tape didn't come off at all, though maybe a good chunk of her lip did. "Oooowwww…." She sniffled.

Jupiter sighed. "You know, Shields once told me you needed protection from more than just youma. I think you need protection from yourself."

"I would express my amazement at us actually agreeing on something, but I think that's getting clichéd."

Jupiter jumped a foot in the air. "Shields!"

Tuxedo Mask turned his head in her direction, acknowledging her greeting, and returned to fingering Serena's taped-lip in examination. "Odango," he sighed.

"It was a good idea!" Serena protested, but it came out kind of garbled, considering her mouth was half taped-shut.

"What exactly was she doing with duct tape?" Mask asked Lita.

"Taping her feet to the roof so she wouldn't fall."

"Her feet?" Mask echoed, alarm tingeing his tone.

"With slippers," harmphled Serena.

Mask sighed again, in relief this time.

Lita winced. "Didn't think about that. I don't even want to contemplate the sort of noise she'd make if we had to rip the tape off her feet."

"I'm right here!" Serena burbled indignantly.

_SHIKK._ In one fluid movement, Tuxedo Mask ripped the tape from Serena's mouth.

"OW!" Serena whisper-shrieked. "My lips!"

"The skin around your mouth is turning all red," commented Lita, laughing a little. "You look like you've been drinking Kool-Aid."

Serena moaned and covered her face. Mostly to hide her face, but also because the scars burned like fire from the tape being removed. She felt like there was a net of flame branding her face. "Uuuuugh!"

"It's okay, lover-boy can't see it."

"LITA!"

"_Joking_," said Jupiter.

"Insensitively," said Mask.

Lita blew out a breath. "Ugh. Fine. Anyway, Asanuma wanted me to remind you of the pool gathering at his house for Serena's birthday," Lita said. "He ordered me to threaten you with pictures, whatever that means."

Darien and Serena exchanged looks. It annoyed Lita a little bit that they still did that even though Darien was blind.

"I told you we should have stolen his camera when we had the chance," Darien said to Serena.

"Which one?" she retorted. "He has two. Plus one in his cell phone."

"What _are _all the pictures everyone mentions?" asked Lita. "I'd like to see them sometime."

"Too bad," said Darien. "Asanuma knows what will happen to him if those pictures see the light of day ever again."

"You threatened him, too?" asked Serena.

Darien flashed a wolfish grin. "Yes."

Serena returned it with one of her own, even though Darien couldn't see it. "Me too! What did you threaten him with?"

"Anyways!" interrupted Lita. "Contrary to popular belief, we didn't sneak onto Serena's roof in the middle of the night to talk about Asanuma. What the hell went down today, Shields?"

Both girls fastened their full attention on Darien. He knocked his hat off his head and massaged his scalp with a gloved hand.

A moment passed. Lita opened her mouth, but Serena's hand squeezed her arm. Lita looked down and saw Serena shaking her head.

When Darien spoke, it was suddenly and unflinchingly.

"I was in a car accident with my parents when I was six. My parents died, and I ended up in the hospital – my sparks either hadn't begun to work yet, or they were sentient enough to realize that if they'd worked it would have tipped people off that something was different about me. Or maybe they were working on the inside, and I'd have died without them."

He paused, and sighed, his hand in his hair. "There was a pediatrics ward in the hospital, but they kept me in a different ward in a private room. I think it was because I had amnesia, but there may have been a different reason."

He paused yet again. "I saw a lot of things while I was there. I think they were hallucinations. Some of them were dreams about the princess. Those are probably actually the reason they kept me in a different ward."

Jupiter opened her mouth to ask something, but Serena squeezed her hand. Darien went on uninterrupted.

"I sneaked outside somewhere in the middle of my stay. I found a boy my age lying on the sidewalk. I felt something strange about him, and add to that the fact that he had pink hair and green skin…" Darien trailed off with a bitter little smile. "until today I'd dismissed him as being just another figment of my imagination from back then."

"The guy today didn't have pink hair or green skin," said Lita.

"I thought he probably didn't," said Darien. "Or Motoki wouldn't have agreed so easily not to call the police. No one at the hospital ever noticed Fiore, or at least, they didn't seem to, so I think he has a way of hiding himself, probably akin to the glamour that prevents the Senshi from being recognized."

Serena looked up. "Do you think he is a Senshi?"

Darien shrugged eloquently. "Your guess is as good as mine. He does seem to have the hatred for you, which apparently is the requisite of being a Senshi."

"Ha ha," said Serena, not at all amused. She wrapped her arms around her knees once more and returned to chewing thoughtfully on her lip.

"Here's what I don't get." Lita burst back in. "How can you have thought Fiore _wasn't_ real?"

Darien removed his mask and rubbed his eyes. "A vast majority of the things I saw when I was a child weren't real, Lita. Or were extremely strange by the standards I learned when I left the hospital."

It was his turn, now, to lapse into silence.

Jupiter looked back and forth between him and Serena. "I just don't get how you can't tell someone's _real._"

"I make _flowers_ appear out of thin air, Lita." Not looking at her, Darien summoned a rose. "Sparks shoot out of my hand when I get hurt." He touched the thorny rose stem to his hand, and golden sparks erupted. "I talk to _trees_." He tilted his head, and the oak tree beside them moved, an up and down movement like a nod, its leaves rustling. "I can move water." He twitched a hand, and a gesyser of water shot up out of the koi pond in the neighbors' back yard.

Jupiter stared at him, and turned to glance at Serena with reproach in her eyes for not telling her Darien could do all these things. To her surprise, Serena seemed just as shellshocked as her, staring at Darien with wide eyes.

"Do you understand?" Darien lowered his hand, and the water splashed back down into the koi pond. "I did things that weren't supposed to be possible. When I got out of the hospital, I assumed they just weren't possible, and they'd just been more hallucinations. It's only been recently, becoming Tuxedo Mask and with the Golden Crystal, that I've discovered just how much actually was real."

Jupiter shook away the astonishment, trying to focus again. "Okay," she said. "So you found this Fiore guy lying on the sidewalk. What then?"

"Well, he was a kid then, about my size," Darien corrected her. He pushed his mask back on his face. "I brought him back to the hospital with me. The whole place was in an uproar because I'd disappeared, so I got chewed out. Like I said, no one noticed Fiore. I took him to my room with me, we became friends. Then, after probably a week, he left."

Serena was frowning very hard. Darien must have sensed it somehow; he touched her face tentatively. "Odango?"

Her face cleared. "Huh?"

"What were you thinking about so hard?" Lita brushed the blonde bangs away from her face.

"Oh, I just…" Serena frowned again. "I just feel like Darien's story's been giving me déjà vu. I was trying to figure out what it was." She shifted her feet in her slippers. "What made you think it was him today? Fiore, I mean."

Darien shook his head. "I don't think it was just today," he said. "I think it must have been him last night, too."

"Whoah!" said Lita. "Why?"

"What happened yesterday was what almost happened today," Darien said. "I didn't realize it until last night, but there was a slight feeling, an aura, before I passed out. Today, I felt it better; he must have been trying to be more subtle about it. But he was too slow, and Odango felt it – that was you, wasn't it?"

"Yup," said Serena, pleased.

"So why would he be trying to make you pass out?" Lita wanted to know.

Darien shook his head again. "I don't think he wants me to pass out; I've been doing that on my own." He considered telling them that he'd been escaping to Elysion, but it was only one more day until Serena's birthday gathering at Asanuma's, and he really wanted it to be a surprise. What difference would one more day make? "He's trying to do something else."

"It didn't sound like he was trying to hurt you," said Lita dubiously. "He was all excited when you remembered him. It was us he hurled across the room."

"If he has an aura," said Serena. "Does that mean he's one of us? A Senshi? Or is he an alien?"

"That pretty neatly sums up the conundrum," said Darien. "I think he's an alien. Something's different; the Golden Crystal is quiet around him. I think it can tell when something's native to Earth."

Serena sighed, propping her chin on her knees. "I want a Golden Crystal."

"Maybe you'll get one for your birthday," Lita teased, making Serena grin at her. She looked back at Darien. "So what's our plan of action?"

"He's after me," said Darien slowly. "So I think you guys should be fine. He'll only come after you guys if you're with me, so I'll go home."

"What if he comes tonight?" Serena's face held worry.

"I'll talk to him," said Darien matter-of-factly. "Find out what he wants. We have a whole decade to catch up on, after all."

"I don't like it," said Serena.

"Too bad, Kool-Aid Mouth." Lita began to work on the duct tape adhering Serena's slippers to the roof. "Don't be jealous of Shields just because all the villains are warm for his form."

Serena grinned again. Lita was so good at making her laugh. "I never thought about that," she insisted.

Darien groaned, but it was a distracted sort of sound. "Don't even."

"You'll get your very own possessive villain someday, I'm sure." Lita patted Serena's knee. "Shields, give me your cane. This tape's begging for a cutting."

L

The red numbers on his alarm clock glowed 2:37 a.m. when Asanuma's eyelids fluttered open. He noticed that first, and the prickly sensation second.

"Damn it," he muttered hoarsely. "Not _again_."

He stared up at the ceiling and flexed his hands. The hard objects cupped in his palms and the mild stinging like mosquito bites all over his body answered his question. Yes, _again_.

He sat up, flicking on his bedside light.

Realistic was not a word that described his situation. In his life, he'd done a lot of weird things, most of them related to pranks played on Darien and Motoki.

This, however, was not a weird prank – though he wished it was. Having to wake up to extract slivers of shiny stone that were protruding from his pores every night, in the middle of the night, would be a really elaborate prank. Even if the crystals were just illusions, which they weren't, because one had cut him several nights before.

Asanuma finished shaking out his sheets and sweeping the slivers off his mattress. The clock now read 2:42. He sat down on his bed and cupped his head in his hands, not bothering to lay back down. He knew what was coming next.

The red numbers on the clock had just changed to 2:44 when the sweat popped out on his forehead. Perspiration trickled down his neck; his whole body felt as though he was being roasted alive. Soon it would calm to a gentle warmth, he knew, but until then, it was just short of agony. Sweat poured from every pore, following the path of the crystal slivers.

Hot flashes. The first night, he'd dismissed it as coming down with the flu, but the second night he'd begun to wonder if it really was hot flashes. Not sure if teenage boys were supposed to experience these, he offhandedly mentioned to Motoki that he'd heard guys could have hot flashes too and was that true? A log-on to the internet and five Google searches later he had his answer: no, guys did not have hot flashes.

What was it, then? Hell if he knew. No disease he could find anywhere caused the body to produce slivers of crystal to be excreted from the body. And it wasn't like he was going to tell anyone stones were popping out of his skin; he liked living outside a government research facility thank you very much.

It was karma, he had tried to amuse himself by thinking. He'd been jealous of Darien's freakiness, and now he was a freak himself. What goes around comes around.

It was almost 3:30 by the time the heat retreated. Even the balmy air of summer against the sweat that coated his skin made him feel clammy. He grabbed a pair of shorts and went to take a shower. Might as well get started early. Serena's birthday party was today, and he had a lot to do.

L

The alien was becoming harder and harder to control. His roots lay deep and hidden; each hour she found yet another buried within him and snapped it. Her power lay in disconnecting the roots of their minds from the nutrition of their souls, and he was thrwarting her in this. It should not have been possible for a being so young in years to have grown so extensively; she had put it down, on her first discovery of the Makaiju and Alan and Ann, to the symbiotic relationship they shared, but this went even further than that. It was as though his soul had been exposed to a growth hormone, something that had stimuated his growth.

The only answer Kisenian could find for the conundrum was Endymion's Golden Crystal. It must have stimulated the growth – yet if this was true, the crystal was far more powerful than she had been led to believe. So was its bearer; he had repelled her once already. But she had been an idiot to go in like that; with such stealth and silence his senses and instincts must have been on alert. She had counted on Fiore's body to distract Endymion, yet he seemed not even to have noticed him.

She would try again, this time allowing Fiore to surface and persuade his friend. It was nectar that led butterflies to flowers, after all, not vinegar.

L

A bad feeling, like a cold hand clenched around his intestines, assaulted Darien from before he woke up Saturday morning. It was an intensified version of the foreboding he had always felt during the Dark Kingdom days when Serena was in danger, amplified by one of two things: his new awareness, or because this new enemy was more powerful than Beryl had been. Or perhaps both of these things contributed to the strength of the foreboding.

Serena noticed it when she arrived. "Are you okay?" she asked, and he felt her fingering the rope between them, like a snake's tongue flicking through the air to taste the atmosphere, to perceive any disturbance in him. "He didn't show up overnight, did he?"

"No," said Darien, but the thought had occurred to him. Perhaps Fiore had come during the night. There was nothing stopping him from doing so, surely. But if he had, surely Darien wouldn't be here right now, would he?

Unless perhaps he was hallucinating this moment. Perhaps Serena wasn't really here, perhaps he wasn't really here. Perhaps he was still in Queen Beryl's cave, unconscious – perhaps he was still in a coma in the hospital – perhaps the month since all that had passed was a dream, a hallucination.

Since all that had happened, he had felt a strange detachment from everything, as though reality had lost him. Or he had lost reality, rather. His life had been incredulous enough already, but then that strange trip to the place where another Serena was – and all those incredibly realistic dreams afterwards in the hospital – he found it hard to accept that the month since he'd left the hospital was not still just part of another, longer dream and that he would soon be sucked into another one.

"I think we should stay home," said Serena doubtfully. "You look like you're in the hospital all over again."

"No!" His vehemence surprised her, Darien was sure. Asanuma would kill him if Serena missed her birthday party for him. Plus, he had to give her his present – if it worked. He reached out for her hair and found it, ruffled her bangs – which had grown out, he suddenly noticed. "Stop being such a worrywart. That's my job. Now let's go."

L

"I still don't understand why you wouldn't let me drive," complained Serena.

"I know you think my hair looks emo, but do I really strike you as suicidal?"

"Asanuma says I'm doing good!"

"Ha!" Darien guffawed. "I thought you were trying to convince me to let you drive? Reminding me that Asanuma's teaching you is not the way to do that."

"Harrumph. It would be so much cooler," Serena complained. "I'm getting all sweaty."

"That's what you get for wearing a bathing suit under a full set of clothes," Darien said unsympathetically. "Long sleeves, no less. And you think I look Goth."

He heard her scuff her foot against the sidewalk, heard the whisper of the tiniest shred of cloth tearing off.

"Look," he said, "I'll cut my hair when you stop wearing all that bulky clothes to cover them up."

Serena scuffed her shoes again and didn't answer.

Irritation was what Darien felt at her insistence upon covering up her scars with hot winter clothing. On the one hand, he could understand why she wanted to hide it, to escape the stares. On the other hand, he knew she was stronger than that. Or at least, he wanted her to be stronger than that. She shouldn't bow under the weight of other people's opinions.

Yet he recognized he couldn't push her to stop, not when he was hiding his eyes the way she hid her scars. In the end, all he felt was more pain, more anger at the Dark Kingdom bastards who had done this to her, more fury at his inability to fix it.

He had tried, once, after he gained some semblance of adeptness at roof-walking again. Had sneaked into her room and, gripping the Golden Crystal tightly in his hand, lightly touched her scars and wished, hard, for them to heal.

But nothing had happened. He had felt the scars grow warm under his fingertips for a moment, almost dangerously hot, and he remembered being shocked that Serena did not awake. Whatever had caused Serena's scars to heal silver instead of normally and fade was a strange, stubborn magic.

But maybe Helios would be able to fix it.

"Here we are!" Serena announced, squeezing his hand. He felt her fall still, the breath of air as her head turned back and forth. "Wow, there's lots of cars all over…one of his neighbors must be having a party."

This should have rung the first warning bell in Darien's mind. Perhaps it did, but the klaxon was muffled by his musing on Serena's scars.

They wended their way up the front walk of Asanuma's large front yard, up the shallow steps…Darien felt a strange pressure, a pounding and scuffling on the ground…

He opened his mouth, frowning –

Serena pressed the doorbell –

Realization flashed into his brain, and he grabbed her hand – "Seren – "

"Serena-chan!" Asanuma's voice, backgrounded by a roar of "SURPRISE!"

In his hand and in his head and in his heart, Darien felt Serena freeze.

With his free hand, he grabbed Asanuma's collar. He yanked him toward him. "You idiot!" he hissed. "Lita!" he said loudly. "Where's Kino?"

"Here." He heard Lita's voice in front of him and felt Serena's hand leaving his. "Happy birthday, girl!"

"Oh – thank you!" Serena's voice. Bright. "Thank you so much – everybody! Everyone from school's here? Wow! I can't believe it!"

"Everyone's been waiting for you so we can go swimming." Lita, talking, drawing Serena away from him. Fury boiled up in Darien for her, too – was she deaf? Was she blind? "C'mon, put your suit on – oh, it's already on…"

"Hang on," said Darien loudly, but no one was listening to the blind guy anymore. He heard the general movement of feet toward the other end of the room, the brushing of skin against the edges of the French door jambs. Splashing, music starting to thump and wail.

"Hey, Dare-Bear." He felt Asanuma's hand patting his fingers, sensed the confused irritation building up inside Asanuma. "Sorry, did we shock you? I know you're really protective of Serena, but we figured if you let you in on the secret Serena would find out – "

Darien snapped his head back to face Asanuma. He felt the hackles of a wolf rippling inside him, ripping out a snarl. "You _idiot_!"

"What?" Asanuma gripped Darien's fist tightly, prying his fingers off.

Darien released him and stepped back, gritting his teeth. "Do you not have a single tactful bone in your body?" he snapped. "Serena's got _scars_. She was nervous about wearing a swimsuit even in front of just you guys, and now you've gone and invited the whole damn school?"

He couldn't see Asanuma's expression, couldn't see if he was angry or repentant or shocked, and it made him madder. Asanuma had eyes that worked, why didn't he USE them? How could he NOT have noticed Serena's insecurity about her body since the attack? Or was he just being spiteful, because of Rei again? Either way, what kind of friend was he?

Asanuma was stammering something. "Spit it out," Darien said sharply.

"I didn't _know_," Asanuma said. "I'm a _guy_, Darien, I don't notice those things – "

"Stop making excuses and start fixing it," said Darien icily. "Get everyone out of the pool and propose something else. Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Then we can use you as the ass."

"Whoah, whoah!" A new voice entered – Motoki's. "What the heck?"

"Where's Lita?' Darien demanded.

"Outside with Serena," said Motoki, but his voice was hard. "Darien, what the hell?"

"Ask Asanuma," he said shortly and moved to leave the room, sweeping the floor with his cane sloppily, but a hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Whoah there, Mr. Temper," said Motoki's voice. "Hang on. Don't go storming out there in a rage."

Darien faced the voice. "Do I look like I'm raging?" His voice rose. "Do you think I'm going to go out there swinging and yelling like a drunk and start a fight?"

"I think you're upset," said Motoki's voice levelly. "And you know that I know that you know you always regret the things you do when you're upset, Darien. So stop for a second and tell me why Asanuma's riled you up this time."

Darien felt a tic in his jaw. "Let's try this," he said. "Guess why I'm mad. Serena has scars from the youma attack. You all, including Asanuma, are and have been aware of that. Serena feels insecure about those scars, Serena has been wearing long sleeves to cover up those scars, Serena was nervous about showing those scars just to you guys, Serena is now being bullied into wearing her swimsuit in front of all of Azabu High School because someone informed us this would be a party just for close friends." He rolled an eyeball in the direction he felt pressure on the ground in, knowing that the movement of his golden eyes discomfited people. "Can you guess why I'm mad?"

"If you're mad about that, then you need to blame all of us, not just Asanuma." Motoki's voice was stern, and it made Darien angrier. What, was he a child to be reprimanded? As if they were not the ones who had committed a wrong? "We were all responsible for it. We all thought Serena would enjoy the surprise."

Darien clenched his jaw. "Well, you thought wrong." He began walking toward the sound of the splashing again. He heard the others following him. He also heard a door opening and footsteps approaching them. Familiar footsteps.

"Asanuma!" exclaimed Serena's voice. "I – I'm really happy you did all this for me. But, um…I'm not feeling so well all of a sudden?"

"What's wrong?" said Lita anxiously, and Darien heard the brush of her hand on Serena's forehead. "You don't have a fever…"

"She was sneezing up a storm this morning," Darien said abruptly.

He felt their gazes on him. "And you let her out of the house?" said Lita's voice in shock.

"Well, she wanted to come to the party so badly – although maybe the surprise of our _whole school_ here was too probably too big a _shock_," he added.

"Then I guess you shouldn't swim," said Asanuma quickly. "I'm sorry, Serena-chan."

"N-n-n-o, Num-m-ma!" Serena had even gotten her teeth to chatter! Darien winced a little. She was going to kill him when she found out what he'd told them and that he'd let her play-act in front of them. "I-it was so n-n-nice! I'm so h-h-happy – achoo!"

"Here, let me get you a coat – " Asanuma's feet pounded up the stairs out of earshot.

"I'll go make some hot cocoa," said Lita, and her footsteps faded away too.

Darien gripped Serena's hand and, tentatively, so that she could stop him if she wished, brushed his fingers across her face and the rope. Relief gushed from her.

"Thank you for playing along," she said, and he felt the soft weight of her head into the junction between his shoulder and chest.

"Don't thank me so quickly," said Darien. He did not elaborate.

He felt the warmth of her sigh gust through the thin fabric of his shirt. "You did something, didn't you?"

Darien grimaced sheepishly, then said seriously, "Do you want to go home?"

She lifted her head. "I can't just leave everyone – "

Darien pushed her head back down. "That's not what I asked!"

Her finger poked him in the chest. "Stop pushing me! We ARE going to stay! Asanuma would be heartbroken if I didn't."

"Fine," conceded Darien, more reluctantly than even Serena had expected.

She paused. Then –

"Wait, you don't think it would be better if we left? You think he's going to show up again?"

"What? No!" Darien shook his head even as the possibility ensnared his mind. "No…well, maybe. Here, look, how about I leave and you stay. I'll come back at four – "

"No!" Hands grabbed his arm. "You can't leave!"

"What? Why not?"

"I don't want to celebrate my birthday without you," Serena said, in a "duh!" voice. "I wouldn't have gotten past my fifteenth birthday, much less to sixteen, if it weren't for you."

"Well, I'll go home and make you a cake and you can celebrate with me afterwards – "

"Noooooo!" Serena whined, tugging on his arm. "Pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaase, Shields?"

Darien snorted. "Your puppy dog look doesn't work on me anymore, Tsukino, remember?"

L

And yet he still ended up giving in. How whipped he was. And now he was really wishing he'd had more willpower, because Asanuma – idiot, moron, dumb, stupid, so-going-to-get-jumped-after-this Asanuma – had decided to have everyone play Spin the Bottle so Serena could enjoy her party without getting in the pool and getting sicker.

"How could he think I'd enjoy this?" muttered Serena to Darien behind a Kleenex as she pretended to blow her nose.

Darien rolled his eyes but didn't answer, too preoccupied with formulating an extremely realistic sounding whooping cough so that he would get out of having to kiss anyone if – God FORBID – the bottle did point at him.

"I mean, HONESTLY," continued Serena. "Achoo! I'm practically spraying boogers here. Why would he start a KISSING game?"

"You're the birthday girl," muttered Darien. "Why don't you just say you don't want to play it anymore?"

"I can't do that!" said Serena, sounding horrified. "Everyone's having so much fun!"

He sighed. She'd complain about things a mile a minute, but actually express her unhappiness to the guilty party? Heaven forbid!

Hoots suddenly upheaved the room. Darien lifted his head and glowered, unable to see what had caused the commotion. "What is it?" he demanded from Serena, but she didn't reply.

Instead, he heard her saying, "Oh, no, I can't, I'll get you sick!"

"You don't look that sick to me," returned a teasing voice over Serena's continued protests. Darien identified it as Tonami's. "Just a little pale. Don't worry, we'll get you some color in no time."

"No, Tonami, really, I'm contagious – "

"I'd be glad to catch some of what you've got!" called a voice, and Darien didn't waste the time to identify it.

Instead, he cleared his throat.

The hubbub faded. Darien half-winced, half-smirked at the silence he inspired.

He opened his mouth to speak though he was still wondering what the hell to say – when suddenly Motoki's voice rang out. "Time for cake!"

Cheer erupted anew. Darien at still as people stood and coursed past him. Thank God for that Toki.

L

"Now I bet you're wishing you'd let me drive," Serena teased as Darien felt another weight being added to the stack of present he held in his arms.

"Seriously, I'll drive you guys home," said Asanuma.

"We've got it," said Darien for the fifteenth time. Was it just him, or did he have to repeat himself so much more since he'd gone blind?

He felt a questioning tug on the rope. Serena wanted to know why he didn't want Asanuma to drive them home.

He sent back a "you'll see" mysterious sort of feeling.

"We want to walk!" he heard Serena insist cheerily to Asanuma. "Seriously, I feel better out in the warm air than in an air-conditioned car…"

"If you're sure…" Asanuna sounded dubious. "Dare, call me on your cell if anything happens."

"What could happen?" demanded Serena, and Darien heard the microscopic rustling of Asanuma ruffling her hair.

"He's traveling with you, remember?"

"A guide dog who walks into poles," commented Darien. "I'm surprised I've lasted this long."

"Yeah, we're all kind of disappointed," quipped Asanuma. Darien wondered if he was imagining the little note of sincerity in Asanuma's voice. "Are you SURE you don't want me to drive you? Or at least bring your presents later?"

"You CAN do that," Serena decided, and Darien felt the presents in his arms being taken away but quickly replaced by Serena's hand. "Thank you so much for everything, Numa!"

"Happy birthday, princess," replied Asanuma. He sounded a little distracted. "Dare, you're sure my number's in your cell – "

"Good night, Numa," said Serena and Darien firmly in unison, and headed down the path.

They had barely left his front yard when Serena burst.

"Why did you want us to walk?" she demanded, tugging his arm. "Is something wrong?"

"No."

"Oh." Her tugging on his arm ceased for a moment as she digested this, then began anew. "Then why?"

"Not yet."

"Darieeeeeeeeeen…"

"Ask me two blocks from here."

"Oh, come ON…"

"Patience is a virtue, Tsukino."

"Virtue smirtue!" exclaimed Serena. "_I_ never keep things secret from _you_!"

"Sometimes I wish you would," muttered Darien, remembering yesterday afternoon when she'd babbled to him about how hot so-and-so was for the whole grocery shopping trip.

"Well, I can't. Sorry." Serena grinned at him and pulled Darien's present to her out of her pocket. "This thing has games on it, right?"

"Did you just pull the graphing calculator I gave you out of your _pocket_?" said Darien, his voice a little strange.

"Yup," she said, pressing keys and watching the screen intently. "Why?"

Darien just shook his head. And she calls me a nerd, he thought. "Maybe I should have gotten you some pocket protectors to go with it."

"Darien, I can't find the games," Serena whined, paying him absolutely no attention at all.

"No games? What do you call the compound interest solver?"

"Okay, THAT was nerdy."

"Pot, this is kettle. You're black."

"Don't be racist!"

He laughed. "That is such a clichéd joke."

"And the pot kettle saying is so fresh and new," Serena retorted. "Where are we going?"

"The park," said Darien. "Since you're so eager for something fresh and new."

He heard her laughter. "I don't think I've ever gone a single day in my life without going to the park. Although now that there's no youma to show up there, it's gone down to, like, two times a day instead of five."

L

Finding a secluded bench to sit on without telling Serena he wanted to sit in a secluded area (because that would just be weird), he had planned on being a minor trial, but Serena set off immediately for the isolated little grove they'd gone to with Buji.

He waited until they were seated to take out the Golden Crystal. He felt Serena sit forward. "What are you doing?"

He flashed her a smile as a golden glow suffused his hands.

Then suddenly his face stiffened. His smile disappeared. Serena grabbed his arm even as his snaked out to grab hers.

"Fiore."

Darien's single word hovered in the silence. Laughter spilled out of the shimmering air before them. Then the same man from before appeared, tall and mullet-haired. However, his expression was tense, his jaw clenched beneath the long hair; the laughter did not come from him.

Instead, Serena, squinting, saw the flower fastened to his collar. Before her very eyes, its petals unfurled and revealed a tiny woman within its center. _She _was laughing.

Serena's grip on Darien's arm tightened. "Darien," she said, "there's a flower on his collar." She concentrated on maintaining a calm voice, aware that Darien found it more difficult to understand the visual picture she tried to poaint for him when she babbled. "It's pink, and there's a woman inside it, less than ten centimeters tall? She's the one laughing. He's not."

"You see, Fiore?" The woman's dulcet voice had a buzzing texture to it, as though more than one voice was speaking. "He has been blinded by them. He must depend on one of them to tell the world to him – "

"Fiore, would you please speak?" Darien did not let go of Serena's hand, but he took a step forward. "If it's really you. Like she said, I'm blind, so I can't tell if you're here unless you talk."

The man parted his lips. "Darien." His voice was like a balloon, swollen and about to burst. "Did they do this to you?" He took a step closer, lifted a hand to Darien's face as he had before.

Darien's jaw tensed. He shifted his head away, avoiding Fiore's touch. "They who?"

"Them. Her." Fiore's face turned towards Serena, eyes narrowed. "_Senshi_."

His hand moved away from Darien towards Serena. Toward her throat. "The same ones who tore apart my galaxy with their war."

Darien's warning voice lashed out like a whip. "Stay away from her."

Fiore tore his eyes from Serena's and looked back at Darien.

Darien's eyes stared past Fiore. "She had nothing to do with this. This happened because of someone named Beryl, not the Senshi."

"They've brainwashed him," hissed the female flower voice. "Beryl was murdered by the Senshi a millennium ago."

"Your sources are a little old," a new voice informed her.

A flash of green blurred in front of Serena and Darien, cutting them off from Fiore.

"You're in for a little shock," said Sailor Jupiter, eyes narrowed. "Beryl didn't die."

Static lightning began to crackle, white and forked. "And here's another shock – JUPITER THUND – "

"Jupiter, _no_!" Serena jumped forward.

Only to cushion Jupiter's landing on the sidewalk as she was thrown backward by Fiore.

Who didn't look human anymore. Pink hair fell over pointed elfin ears and green skin.

Panting, he looked up with red eyes. "You see, Darien? They tried to hurt me. You won't let them hurt me, will you?"

Serena's groan cut off any reply Darien might have made. Jupiter had just rolled off her, and the blonde was peeling herself from the sidewalk.

"You won't," Fiore shouted. "You won't!"

"Hurt them," the flower hissed. "Hurt them like they hurt him. Hurt them like the've hurt you."

Fiore's spine arched. He screamed, crouching, clutching his head. Jupiter immediately interposed herself between him and Serena.

Not a moment too quickly. Spears snaked out of Fiore's fingernails, long and sinuous – then snapped abruptly rigid and shot out. Jupiter went flying for a second time, a blizzard of cuts on her fuku.

Her flight ended against a telephone booth. She fell down to the sidewalk without making a sound but the squeal of her body sliding down the glass.

"Jupiter!" Serena cried and ran towards her.

What happened next was all a blur. Fiore's nails shot out again, hurtling toward Jupiter's prone body. Serena fumbled to her feet, but she was too slow, too slow.

The cry of pain that split the air was not the high, girlish one expected. Instead, only a grunt, quickly muted, was heard, and quickly overshadowed by the grotesque sound of Fiore's claws slurping through flesh.

Both Fiore and Serena's eyes followed the long path of his nails. Golden eyes, wide, gazed back.

"No!" Fiore's nails retracted robotically. He stepped back, head shaking. "NO! _NO_!"

Serena found herself beside Darien. He had fallen into a trembling crouch, steadying himself with a hand planted on the ground. A puddle of blood was spreading quickly on the cement, soaking his white glove.

Serena's hair fell like a curtain around his head as she bent over him, and she pressed her hand against the holes in his abdomen, pushing back the blood that was so powerful, just like him. She was saying something to him, whispering something, soothing something, but she couldn't hear her own words; her heart was beating too loudly in her chest, because it seemed to her that this was too soon for this to happen again, that this had already happened, just a month ago, just a short time ago, just a fresh memory ago, and there was a tidal wave frozen above her but about to crash down and drown her if he left, and the blood was so wet and warm against her hands –

Then there was air against her blood-slick palm.

Her heart stopped.

The voice spun her around. "He is mine."

Fiore floated in the air, panting, staring down at her. Darien lay in his arms, eyes open but motionless. Serena reached for the rope, and there was that same strange feeling, the overgrowth of weeds over his psyche –

"He was never yours."

With that, Fiore disappeared with his cargo.

Serena stared at the patch of sky where they had been. Her eyes looked as though they might pop out of their sockets a scream felt as though it would tear out of her lungs her blood felt as though it would punch its way out of her heart.

"_DARIEN_!"

The scream was a red-hot knife, slicing the air like vaporized butter, and it sliced Lita's heart apart, too, to hear it.

"Serena..." She hand touched the blonde's shoulder. "Look."

Water streaming into her mouth from her eyes and nose, Serena turned her head in the direction Lita's gentle hand directed it. There, in the pool of cooling blood. Gold spikes glinted in the sun.

Slowly, she reached out and picked it up. Panic fought its way further up within her; this was the Golden Crystal, without the Golden Crystal, Darien couldn't heal, his lungs had surely been punctured, he would die –

She pressed her forehead against it. It poked sharp into her skin, and it had the metallic smell of blood; she ignored it, tried to think. Tried to wriggle past the barbed wire that was her ragged emotion, to escape the prison it created. She dragged in shuddering breaths. Having this, Darien's crystal, so close to her head should make hr think better, should give her his intellectual powers shouldn't it? What do I do, Darien, what do I do?

"Darien said he would talk to him." Lita's voice was hoarse, still trying to find her lungs after the beating she'd taken. "Fiore's not going to hurt him. He nearly burst a blood vessel when he saw what he'd done."

"Darien's already dying," Serena whispered. "Without the Golden Crystal, he won't be able to heal before his lungs fill up with blood. It doesn't matter if Fiore hurts him again or not. Lita, what do we _do_?"

"First off, get up off the ground." Sailor Jupiter hauled the little blonde to her feet. "Second, put the Golden Crystal away before something happens."

Obediently but robotically, Serena slid the crystal into her Sub-Space pocket.

"Next, home," said Lita, and she hefted Serena up into her arms, then pushed off. A dozen leaps later, she landed on the tree outside Serena's window. "Oopsy daisy. Here we go."

Serena slid out of Lita's arms and onto her carpet. She walked like a shell-shocked soldier to her bed. She sat and then stood back up, reaching into her back pocket and withdrawing a graphing calculator. She stared at it and burst into tears.

Lita looked away. This was when Darien would have taken over. He had occupied the spot of Serena Comforter for the whole time Lita had known Serena, and to comfort Serena now felt as though she would be intruding where she wans't wanted.

Or maybe she just didn't trust herself to be able to make Serena feel better. She turned away. "Promise me you'll stay here until I get back," she said.

"He's not here anymore," Serena hiccoughed through tears. "Through the rope – he's not here anymore."

Lita didn't know if she meant not here anymore as in too far to be sensed or not here anymore as in dead, and she was too chicken to ask. "I'm going to look anyway," she said, and jumped out the window.

L

Lita had entered Motoki's world as a shock. Literally – he'd brushed against her in the hallway her first day at school and gotten a static shock.

Since then, he'd received more static shocks from Lita than coincidence could explain, and he'd teased her about it a little (which always made her flustered, which he loved, so he teased her about it even more), but he'd always put it down to that she must shuffle her feet when she walked, or had some strange affinity for electrons.

The day his radio squawked when he picked it up to change the channel was the day he wondered if maybe the static shocks were not caused by Lita but by him. That notion started as an idle thought, quickly pushed aside to worry about trig homework, but when he flicked on his desk lamp a few days later and the light bulb blew, the possibility returned with far more force.

The night he woke up and found the sheet and mattress under her hand charred and smoking confirmed it. Something was really, really wrong with him.

It was on another one of these occasions of a smoking mattress – his sheets were a charred mess by then, and he'd sprayed half a bottle of cologne in his room to cover the smokey smell – that he woke up, as was now becoming habit, to spit groggily on the smoking spot. (He had tried pouring a glass of water on it, but then the matrress got soaked and started smelling weird. Saliva seemed more sanitary than mold, so he stuck to the spitting method.)

He rolled over, turning his back on the damp spot, and his half-shut eyes landed on the window. More specifically, on the strange rain he could see falling through the window.

He sat up and swung his legs out of bed, walking groggily to the window for a better look.

_How weird_, he thought, already falling back asleep. _It's raining flower petals._ And without a further thought about it, he fell back into bed and started snoring.

L

When Serena woke the next morning, Lita was sprawled on her floor in Senshi fuku under Serena's fuzzy rabbit blanket that she kept for such instances. The clock and bars of sunlight caging the room announced that it was nine o'clock. Her mind counted back: Darien had been taken away 14 hours ago. Fourteen hours was enough time for more than 2 school days, 28 anime episodes, 2 full nights of sleep – she tortured herself with how much could happen – could have happened to him – in 14 hours.

Her stomach writhing like a snake, still dressed in yesterday's swimsuit under clothes, she crawled out from the covers and touched Lita's tiara, causing the fuku to melt into Lita's normal clothes.

Something kissed her cheek. She flinched, arm flying in front of her face – but then she saw what it had been: a flower petal, now drifting lazily into her lap. She picked it up and fingered it. Something was not quite right…

She glanced out the window, then took a double take, standing. Flower petals were falling outside her window like tree leaves in autumn. Languorous, twisting pink petals landing softly on the carpet of petals that had already blanketed the ground.

They were the exact same shade of pink as the flower woman yesterday had been.

"Serena!" The call drifted up the stairs. Serena ran to the door, vaulting Lita's long legs, into the hall, and halfway down the stairs.

"Yes?"

"I need you to come grocery shopping with me." Her mother tapped her leg through the banister. "What are you doing in yesterday's clothes? Get dressed, please. We've got to pick up the ingredients for your big birthday cake!"

Serena bit her lip. "Mom, about that – "

"No, no more sleeping, you're coming, even if I have to dress you and drag you myself!" Her mother started around the baniser to come up the stairs.

"No!" Serena jumped in front of her. "I'm getting ready, I'll be ready in five minutes!" She raced up the stairs and into her room. She looked at Lita, scrawled a note on a piece of summer homework, and quickly changed into a sundress. She slid a hand into her subspace pocket, and felt the warm spikes of the Golden Crystal. Blood had dried on it in little crusts; she pressed her lips together and made her eyes very wide to keep the tears from spilling out. She undid her odangoes, as sleep had inflated them to twice their usual size and made her hair almost as spiky as the Golden Crystal. Brushing them took more time than the note-writing and changing together had, and even after two tries, her hair still dragged on the floor. She wrapped each tail around an odango again, which lifted them about five centimeters higher.

She crossed the room to the window, lifting a leg before she remembered that she was leaving the house out the front door, not via the tree. At any other time she would have laughed; now it just made her feel grim. She closed her bedroom door carefully behind her before joining her mother downstairs.

Her whole mind was fixed on Darien, and she remember the first few days after they had both been released from the hospital, after numberous tests and police interrogations. Her mother had not let her leave the house for two days, keeping her in bed and fussing over her, until at last she had let her go to the grocery store to pick up some milk.

_"Serena, I don't know if you should be leaving the house so soon…"_

_At her mother's hesitant voice, Serena turned from the front door. "Mom," she said with a reassuring smile, "There's nothing wrong with my insides. I can handle a walk to the grocery store."_

_"Maybe so, but I'd feel better if I came with you."_

_"Mom, let it be already. Gosh, you'd think she was five or something."_

_At her brother's voice, Serena started and glanced toward the stairs. Sammy swung a leg over the banister and grinned at her, sticking his tongue out. She returned his smile tentatively._

_Ilene's knuckles were at her lips. "Okay…but call me when you get there."_

_"Mooooom," said Sammy._

_"I will, Mom," inserted Serena. "Bye."_

_She closed the door behind her quickly and trotted down the steps. Her haste to escape her mother's anxiety carried half a block, and then her speed stuttered. Like fuel evapoarated by sun, her momentum was sapped by the whispers she heard, and the pointing fingers glimpsed from the corner of her eye._

_She tried to bolster herself with the thought that this was only to be expected. On her first trip outside since returning home from the hospital with her scars, what else had she thought would happen? That no one would notice? That no children would be alarmed? The idea was silly. Stupid. Silly, stupid, Serena._

_To cover the scars on her arms, she had worn a long-sleeved shirt, and as a result, the cold air that greeted her as she entered the grocery store was a welcome relief. She felt sure sweat had soaked her shirt in dark spots, and she wasn't sure which was more humiliating: that, or her scars._

_Bypassing the carts, she unfolded her mother's short list and headed first for the bakery. Her eyes fastened to the floor to avoid the gazes she feared would be fixed on her, she did not notice the impending collision until it happened._

_"Ooph!" she bounced backwards. A distant corner of her mind registered that something felt familiar…_

_"Sorry," grunted a voice. Oh. A very familiar voice._

_"Darien?" Serena half-exclaimed. The dark-haired junior whom she hadn't seen since beign released from the hospital two days ago stood hunched over a shopping cart, his expression stormy. "What are you doing?"_

_"What does it look like, Odango?" Darien's voice, though its usual teasing tone, held an edge. "Shopping. I got tired of eating instant ramen."_

_"I didn't know it was possible to get tired of ramen," said Serena._

_"Ha ha," replied Darien. "You're so funny."_

_Serena stepped hastily to one side as an aggressive old lady came humping and barreling through with her cart. She found herself arm to arm with Darien._

_He turned, frowning down at her. He wore sunglasses, and she felt a little twinge. If only it were so easy to hide her rewards from Beryl…_

_"Are you wearing long sleeves?" he demanded. "It's boiling outside!"_

_"Are you grocery shopping on your own?" Serena shot back. "You can't see!"_

_That was going too far; she knew it even before it left her lips._

_"Darien – I'm sorry – "_

_He shrugged jerkily. "It's the truth." He turned away from her, feeling across the shelf for a certain bread. "Moronic of me, anyway, to think I could do this without seeing," she heard hum mutter._

_"Not moronic," she protested._

_He turned his head around as though to look at her over his shoulder, then stopped halfway through the motion. As though he had remembered he couldn't see her, Serena realized with a knotting of her stomach._

_"You weren't supposed to hear that part," he said._

_"Oh," said Serena. "Sorry." She rubbed her wrists together. "What kind of bread were you looking for?"_

_"Baguette," said Darien. "I'm in a bingeing mood."_

_Serena silently picked one up and put it in his cart. "What else?"_

_Darien sighed, digging a hand in his hair. "This is exactly what I planned to avoid."_

_Serena knew he meant shopping with her, and she also knew he meant he didn't want to impose on her by making her help him shop. Even though she knew, his reasons, she still felt a sting, the same sting she would have felt if he had been too embarrassed to shop with her because of her scars…_

_"Alright," said Darien, catching her hand and putting it on the cart handle, then covering it with his own. "Apples. Steer me toward them."_

_Though the grocery store's air conditioning had long since dried Serena's perspiration, she felt a new warmth flood her._

What would she do if he was dead? What would she do? The question was a cliff, and she was dangling from it, the stone crumbling beneath her fingers. The possibility that he was dead yawned like a black, bottomless canyon beneath her.

"Serena." A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped.

"Whoah, honey." Her mother unpried her hand from the front door's knob. "Did you stay up so late last night watching scary movies?"

Serena managed a sheepish grin. "Yeah. Sorry."

Her mother lifted an eyebrow but softened it with a smile. "You're the one who suffers from it, not me. Was it a scary movie about a grocery store?"  
"Yeah, the bagboys were zombies." Serena launched into a babble, keeping just enough thought on what she was saying to sound borderline sane. The rest of her returned to dangling above that canyon.

Aside from the gales of flower petals floating down, the first sign something was wrong was the people lying prone on the sidewalk. And the cars sitting smashed and crumpled against each other, their engines still running and blinkers still blinking.

Serena did not notice them at first. It was her mother's gasp, the screech of the brakes, and lurch of the car at the sudden stop that snapped her head up to land her eyes on the street before them.

"Oh my God." Serena echoed her mother's gasp. "What happened?"

"Stay in the car, honey," her mother commanded her, climbing out. She went to kneel next to one of the still women. Serena wrestled out of her seat belt and scrambled out of the car, too, the hair on the back of her neck standing up like porcupine quills.

"Mom," she said in a voice that, to her detachd consternation, quavered. "Mom – "

The piercing ululation that split the still air cut off her voice. Serena whipped around to see a blur of green and blue shooting past her.

She heard a cry from her mother, but her eyes were glued to the horrendous creature standing before her. It had a woman's upper half: a prominent chest in a Madonna-like bra, a woman's delicate features, and long pink hair. But just below the belly button, the body turned into that of a spider, with long, segmented legs and a huge, pointy green backside.

Excepting the lower half, the creature was like an enlarged version of the flower that had been on Fiore's lapel yesterday.

It smiled at Serena and shrieked gleefully. Razor-sharp canines were revealed inside her mouth.

"Dammit," she whispered. It was the first curse word Serena had uttered since her mother washed her mouth out with soap for calling her preschool teacher the 'b' word. All it seemed to do was make the situation seem worse; it tightened her lungs, squeezing her breathless. She risked a glance away from the alien down at her mother. "Mom – "

That split second was all it took; she was suddenly flying backwards. The briefest resistance against her back, then the teeth of a glass window sank into her shoulders. She tensed; she knew the drill, impact was next. And impact came, a jarring teeth-jarring bash into cement floor that bashed her spine like a melon against rock.

Fear flew into her now, a pelican swooping into the water and plucking up doubts like fish. Perhaps she was paralyzed. She was not Senshi any longer; would this impact have shattered her spine? Perhaps she would never be able to move again.

An eternity seemed to pass between the moment she told her body to sit up and the moment her body obeyed her.

But it passed, and she sat up. And that crisis was diverted for the moment.

She looked beside her and found that she had been hurled into a hardening shop. Somehow, her impact had toppled a rack of shovels down onto towering sacks of weedkiller not a foot away from her. The shovels had split the bags open, the pale green powder innards spilling out on the floor the way her brains might have had the shovels hit her head instead of the sacks.

A whistling sound cut through the air behind her. She dove immediately behind the piled tower of sacks just in time. The tentacle that had whipped in through the shattered window wrapped around a split sack of weed-kill instead of Serena's body.

As Serena watched, the tendril began to hiss. Smoke curled upward from it, and a shriek sounded outside. The tentacle dropped the sack. The green tentacle was blackened and smoked where granules of weed-kil stil clung to it.

Serena, with Senshi-honed speed, grabbed her opportunity. With a grunt, she hefted one of the opened sacks of weed kill and heaved its contents onto the tentacle.

So much stinky black smoke billowed up that the sprinklers in the ceiling kicked in. Serena covered her eyes with a hand, coughing, and heaved another sack into her arms, dragging it toward the door and avoiding the trail of black ash that the incinerated tentacle had left on the floor.

Easing an eye around the door, she saw that Jupiter had woken up to join the fight. The sight stopped her. A Senshi was here now, and if Jupiter couldn't take the monster, then an unable-to-transform Serena certainly had no chance.

Jupiter, in fact, seemed to fighting the alien off quite well, beating her back and basting her with huger bolts of lightning than Serena had ever before seen her use. Jealousy swam within her then, a shark gliding silently through depths too dark to see, and at that time, she did not realize what the feeling was. It would only be later that she recognized the presence of the beast.

When a stray tentacle whipped too close to Jupiter, slicing open her arm, that Serena rocked into motion. She charged out the door and toward Jupiter.

Then green eyes flicked to her with her arms held in front of her face to fend off the alien.

"Serena!" she shouted.

"Use…this!" panted Serena, who knew Lita's admirable muscles would do better with the weed-kill than her noodle limbs ever could.

Jupiter did not waste time raising her eyebrows; she just obeyed, hurling the sack at the alien. She may or may not have infused the throw with lightning speed, but Serena wondered if she had, considering the swiftness with which the bag sailed toward the plant woman spider thing.

The sack exhaled its cargo in a glittery blizzard of green as it descended perfectly upon the alien's head. Smoke exploded in a huge exhalation that left both girls coughing.

When the smoke cleared, only black ash and a few green scraps remained. Jupiter seized Serena, nearly strangling her in the embrace.

"Why did you go out without me?" The reproach in her voice, though it was definitely there, was mostly overwhelmed by the relief.

"I'm sorry," said Serena, feeling as though it was a very inadequate apology.

Just then, her mother began to stir. So, too, did a few of the other people sprawled on the cement.

Jupiter pulled away from Serena. "Do you think there're others?"

"I'd say definitely." Serena had a look of concentration on her face.

Jupiter squinted up at the sky. "Wanna bet it has something to do with these damn petals?"

"No," said Serena, her bright eyes narrow. "I bet they're from Fiore, too. That thing looked just like the flower in his shirt."

"Damn," said Jupiter, but without any particular fire. She just seemed tired. The skin at the corners of her eyes and mouth was pulled tight. She jerked her head at Serena's mother. "Take care of your mom, then. I'll go look around, kick some butt. Come see you when I can."

She opened her mouth to say something reasurring about Darien, but what Serena said next cut her off.

"No, you won't," said the blonde. "I'm coming with you."

Jupiter sighed. "Serena – "

"You know I'm not just going to sit here," Serena interrupted. "Either I come with you to fight or I go on my own." She pointed at the leftover weedkiller. "I'll use that."

"You seriously think your mom's gonna let you out of her sight now?"

"I've gotten very good at lying," said Serena. "No matter what Darien says," she added softly. She swallowed as grief stroked a salty finger down her throat.

She pulled out her Luna Pen and, and, after glancing at the people who were still not quite awake, said quietly, "Luna Pen, please transform me into Sailor Moon."

When the light faded, the uniform was the same, and her scars were gone, concealed by the same glamour that had hidden she and Darien's identities frome ach other for so ridiculously long. The feeling, however, was not there. It was like chewing cotton candy-flavored gum instead of feeling the real thing dissolve on your tongue. No power coursed through her limbs, no shimmer sparkled along her skin, nothing straightened her spine and held her taller and braver.

The truth, though, was not what was important here.

She knelt beside her mother and touched her shoulder gently. "Tsukino-san," she said. It tasted so bizarre on her tongue, clinging to it like a tenacious vine that did not want to be pulled off.

Her mother's beautiful hazel eyes fluttered open. "Serena…?" She began to say, but then her eyes flicked up to the tiara and down, to the smooth, unscarred face. The whole goal in disguising herself had been to keep her mother from realizing it was her, yet Serena felt an unexpected, hollow disappointment when her mother did not recognize her.

"Tsukino-san, I'm Sailor Moon," she said. "A youma just attacked you. I took your daughter to a safe place. I will bring her back as soon as it is safe to do so. So please don't worry, okay?"

Her mother just stared up at her.

Sailor Moon – no, Serena, just Serena – stood up. "Let's go," she said to Jupiter, and luckily for her, Jupiter remembered not to make a huge power jump to the rooftops. They walked briskly, instead, around the street corner and when they were out of sight, Jupiter scooped Serena up into her arms. They sailed up to the rooftops.

The buildings' roofs, expontentially more so than the roads and sidewalk, were carpeted with flower petals. They fluttered up in a veritable eruption every time Jupiter touched down.

"We're looking for an ugly, spiky pink flower that looks like a weed," said Serena. She tilted her head, peering below them despite the little twist in her stomach from the acute awareness that they were waaaaaaaay high in the air and she could no longer jump the way she used to, nor heal. "Actually, it would probably be better to look for a crowd of unconscious people, wouldn't it?"

"Like the one down there?"

Serena followed Jupiter's eyes. "Yep."

"Okay, hang on a sec." Jupiter stopped them, and her grip on Serena tightened. "What exactly are you planning to do down there?"

It was a valid question that Serena had no answer to.

"Please stay up here," said Jupiter. She set Serena down and set her hands heavily on her shoulders for a moment, eyes boring into hers. Then she jumped down.

Serena watched over the lip of the roof as Jupiter greeted a flower/plant/spider thing identical to the first with a couple balls of lightning. What could she do? She had no tiara, no sonic barettes, not even a human weapon to do any damage with. No weed killer anymore, either. Why had she insisted on coming along? All she was was another worry for Jupiter while she fought, and worry for her mother who didn't know where she was.

It took a half hour for this youma to die. Jupiter severed three of its vine-limbs, but they just grew back. At last, she managed a lucky hit in the creature's chest, and it fell still long enough for her to electrify the whole thing into a blackened green tangle. Serena had wondered if they should try to question it, but two minutes of watching the fight had shown her trying to incapactitate the creature but keep it alive would prove too dangerous to Lita.

As it was, blood seeped from a dozen cuts, and bruises were already showing on Jupiter's body when she jumped, panting back up to Serena.

"It doesn't speak English," she said, breathing hard. "It's no good trying to find out where the bastard is."

By bastard, Lita could hav been referring to either Darien or Fiore, but it was really a moot point.

"It doesn't matter," said Jupiter, forcing a grin and pushing sweaty hair from her eyes. "We'll find him."

Serena smiled back, but it was clearer than plastic wrap that she didn't mean it one whit. "Yeah. Of course."

"Tell you what," said Jupiter after a moment of looking at Serena. "How about we go back and get some of those bags of weed-killer to put in your subspace pocket?" She smiled a little. "Heck, in mine, too."

L

Rei breathed.

Again.

Serenity.

Again.

That was what she sought.

The roar of the water rushing down the rocks filled her ears. It drowned out all other noises. In the heart of chaos, peace.

Her stomach trembled within her. The volume of the water crashing down on her was immense. Her body, compared to that enormity, felt like air, an empty vessel. The little food she ate each day contributed to that impression, and to the faint feeling.

She had managed to go to a store only once since leaving the city. With her face plastered on missing person posters, she wished to stay as unseen as possible. There was something she had to achieve before she went back. What that something was still remained hazy.

Hazy. Sometimes it was hard to remember where she was. Who she was. When she was.

The Sacred Fire she had left behind in the city. She had always assumed it to be the medium through which she received visions. A month away from it had burned that assumption to cinders. She walked in visions now. Breathed them. Lived them. The Fire had not been a funnel through which she received the visions. It had been a screen, keeping nearly all of them out.

There was no barrier now, and sometimes the visions overlapped. This was another reason to avoid the small town at the foot of the mountain. It would be all too easy for her to speak in one of the ancient tongues from one of her villages, to be seized by one of the frequent visions of death, to transform, to ask for an object that did not exist in this time.

When she sensed the alien presence, it merely melted into the rest of the dreamy visions that surrounded her like smoke.

It was a few hours later when she jerked, her hand flying to her subspace pocket and the transformation wand within it. In her mind's eyes, she saw herself fighting two slender, green-skinned beings, a tree wreathed in flames.

She rose, and steam hissed and billowed as fire ate the waterfall's curtain.

L

The weed killer helped, it really did. Jupiter backed the monsters up against whatever building Serena was perched on, and then Serena poured the sack on top of them. They got nice little explosions of smoke.

But they didn't seem to be making a dent. They would come to crowds of unconscious people sprawled on the ground, and no flower monster would come out because it had moved on to another batch of victims, or three at once would come out, and only two would get dusted, and the other one would escape to continue the mayhem. Sirens wailed across the city constantly, as though a flock of banshees had come to roost in the city. And the petals didn't stop falling.

Nor did Serena, who checked between battles, find Darien at the other end of the rope. For all she could tell, he was gone. Almost undoubtedly dead.

When it had been dark for hours, Jupiter took them back to Serena's house.

"Plants should need light," she said, though they both knew the spider things weren't exactly like real plants. "Anyway, all that's happening to the people is that they're getting energy sucked, not killed. We need to rest, or something'll take us out of commission permanently. Besides, your mom is probably killing herself with worry right now."

As Jupiter climbed in through Serena's bedroom window, Serena entered the front door, back in her normal clothes. She found herself pounced upon, being cried on and yelled at and hugged breathless all at once.

"Are you alright?" her parents both demanded when at last they pulled back enough to see her.

"Yes," said Serena. She felt rather detached and knew she was not acting appropriate to the situation, but she was so worried, so worried about Darien – "Sailor Moon took me somewhere. I don't know where it was. She just came back and dropped me off here. I'm sorry."

"I'm just so glad you're all right," said her mother tearfully, pulling her back into a tight hug. Around them both were Serena's father's arms, and he was trembling. Serena recognized, clinically, as though noting it on a clipboard in her mind, how very shaken-up they both were, but could not find it in herself to dredge up any relief to reply with.

"And on the day before your birthday, too," whispered Ikuko. "My poor baby…"

Serena begged off at last, saying she was so tired, and escaped to her bedroom. Once upon a time they never would have let her go so easily, but the youma attack and the scars had changed that. Silver lining to every cloud, wasn't that the saying?

No one was in her room when she entered and closed the door, but she opened her closet, and there was Lita still in her fuku crunched up on the floor, her eyes closed.

Serena tugged her upper body out of the closet, giving her more space, and Lita didn't wake up, that was how drained she must have been from the day. A blanket pulled off her bed and draped over Lita, a pillow put under her head, and the Luna Pen used to make her invisible, and Jupiter was set for the night.

Serena did all those things as slowly as she could, and when she was done, stared around for a little while.

For something else to do, she pulled on her pajamas, and then there was nothing else to distract her. She surrended, sitting on the window seat with her knees drawn to her chest. There was the stack of old dried roses on her dresser, there was the Tuxedo Mask UFO doll sitting on her bed, revealed by the removal of the blanket, there was the calendar with Darien's birthday circled in bright pink.

Darien.

Darien

Darien

Darien –

Her mind was a carousel, spinning slowly and inexorably around in circle that did not change, that allowed no breaking away.

She didn't know what to do. She didn't know what to think. She didn't know whether he was even alive still or not. She didn't know what she would do if he wasn't. She didn't know how to find out if he was.

She just didn't know. And there was no way to find out. It was the trapped, suffocating feeling of being in a coffin. Trapped underground with dirt pressed all around you so that you cannot get out, darkness all around you because there is no light, not sound but that of your own panicking breath. Nowhere to go and nothing to do. Just stuck. Trapped.

For every beat of her heart a tear streamed down her face. It did not take long at all for her whole face to become a mask of tears, wet and shiny. She knew he wouldn't like her crying, that it wouldn't accomplish anything, but trying to stop them only made them flow harder and started hiccupping noises in her throat.

A soft knocked sounded on her door. Serena stiffened, swiping her nose. She relaxed her muscles, laying her head on her knees and closing her eyes. She really did not want to talk to anyone right now.

She heard the squeak as the door opened. Her mother's soft, careful "Sweetheart?" The soft padding of feet toward her.

Fingers brushed her hair from her face. Traced the wet trails on her cheeks. Damn it.

"Oh, Serena." Sadness flavored the voice. Serena had the feeling her mother knew that she was awake.

Minutes passed, slowly. At last, she heard her mother stand back up. Gentle fingers touched her hair, undoing her buns, and then she felt the weight of her hair fall upon her back in a soft mat.

"Goodnight, sweetheart." The sound of the door closing.

Serena forced her eyes back open. She reached into her subspace pocket and took the Golden Crystal out. Drawing a bunch of her hair from behind her, she put it in her lap and made a cushion for the crystal. She stared at it, holding the shrunken rope in one hand. Feelings were faint, phantom, like sounds that were so far away that their meaning as muddled and mutated. She could not figure out what Darien was feeling. She could nto figure out what to do.

As sleep battered her with its rams, she curled her fingers around the crystal. It pulsed ever-so-slightly in her hand, like something alive.

L

Dreams for Serena had very rarely been things of pleasure. As a child, her parents had taken her to several doctors and psychiatrists, alarmed by the nightmares and terrors that woke her in tears almost every night. She couldn't remember much about that time except the single night she had spent in a sleep lab, electrodes crawling like snakes from her scalp and the room empty and white around her.

Her parents never took her to a sleep lab again after that, and she learned to keep herself quiet when she woke up from the nightmares. Eventually, they believed she had grown out of it, that it had been a passing phase, more severe perhaps for Serena than for other children.

She had not, however. Her dream, excepting a few and far between, were places of blood, fog, and screams. Not like Molly's, which she had regaled her with stories of, wonderful fairy tale settings with handsome princes that had eyes only for Molly. Serena had always wished for dreams like that.

Looking around now, it seemed like she may have finally gotten her wish. The emerald, flower-dotted green valley that stretched out around her could only have come out of a fairy tale, it seemed. The only things missing were the castle and prince – granted, rather integral parts of the fantasy, but perhaps they came later.

She stood still, waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Goose bumps had begun to crawl up her skin. It was too quiet. And the flowers shivered as if in a wind, but not a breath of air touched her skin. She revolved slowly on the spot, hugging herself, staring hard at the edge where the valley met the faint blue sky.

She realized that she had been staring at one spot for a rather long time. She blinked, and a white horse stood there.

She blinked again. It was still there. How – ?

It stared down at her, not regal but wary. She took a step toward it – it shied backwards a step, wings half-lifting from its back. Her lips parted at the sight. Feathery bird's wings on a horse?

Or was it a horse? Her lips closed. It seemed too human for a horse. That backward step… maybe it was a prince under a curse. This was a dream, after all, and all her favorite fairy tales involved the princess saving the prince from a curse.

Prince or no prince, though, he was skittish. Serena lowered herself slowly to the grass, folding her legs beneath her. She had to grab all her hair out from under her bottom so it didn't drag her head back, and she stuffed it in her lap to keep it from dragging in the flowers – not because she didn't want to get flowers in it but because the flowers were so pretty and her hair was so heavy that it might tear them inadvertently. On top of her hair she placed the Golden Crystal, which was rather warm from being in her palm for such a long time.

She waited, patiently, there. And it paid off. Step by step, lowering of wings inch by inch, the horse approached her. And as he – for he was definitely a he, she had decided – grew closer, she saw that he was not just a winged horse but a winged unicorn. A horn made of what looked just like the Golden Crystal protruded from his fair mane.

This was her first clue that something was not what it seemed. She turned it over in her mind but could make nothing of it, and plus, the unicorn prince was very close, and she did not want to jump up in excitement when she figured out whatever it was and scare him away.

Finally, he was there. His head stretched down toward her. His eyes were blue and very limpid. The horn was very sharp, she could not help but notice as it came very close to her face. This distracted her until she heard something below her head.

"Hey, hey," she said gently, taking the Golden Crystal back out of his seeking lips. "You can't eat this, Darien would kill me."

The unicorn's head snapped up. Her inexplicable certainty that he was human rose exponentially as those eyes speared her as effectively as the horn could have.

"You're human," she breathed. "Aren't you?"

She stared at him. Whiter than snow, a magnificent golden horn spiraling from between its tense ears. Angel's wings spreading from its back, quivering as though seconds from bursting into flight. Its stance, so anxious and ready to flee, reminded her of Ami.

That was what made the decision for her. A breathtakingly beautiful unicorn, she would not have approached. She would have waited to let it approach her. But Ami – she wished that she had not waited for Ami. If only she had gone straight to Ami, and hugged her –

That was what she did for this frightened-looking creature. Bizarre as it may have been to project her feelings for Ami onto a mythical creature, that was what she did.

It twitched as she took a step forward, wings spreading further and swiveling forward. She took another step, and it lowered its horn toward her.

She took a last step and its horn was at her chest, ripping the smallest tear in the fabric of her shirt.

"Are you afraid?" she asked it.

It stared at her. Eyes so like Ami's… She was underwater, so far underwater, but there was a glimmer of sunshine, so far up…

"This…isn't really you…" she hesitated. "…is it?"

Her breath of air was barely a whisper. Like the words of someone in a trance. The square of sunlight grew, it was growing, the blue was lightening, her lungs were bursting…

She blinked.

The unicorn no longer stood before her. Instead, a boy, Darien's height and age, stared at her. His expression identical to that Darien's face had carried when he first recognized Fiore's voice – disbelieving and wary. Frightened.

A gold horn protruded from the tousle of fair hair that fell from his head. He took a step away from her.

She copied his action, respecting his wish to be distanced. "Are you okay?"

His mouth moved for a moment before a rasp, coated in rust, escaped. "You are Sailor Moon?"

"Um – yes – well, Serena Tsukino." She bowed hastily. "Pleased to meet you!"

He stared at her.

His silence gave her a chance to look at him more closely. His hair, she saw now, had barely discernible golden highlights running through it, and his eyes were light, light blue. His clothes, as white as his unicorn coat had been, were the sort of thing she had always imagined King Arthur's pages wore: a tunic-like garb over trousers.

"Darien-sama speaks of you."

The rusty voice held a light tint of something. Curiosity? Hostility? Suspicion? Serena struggled to figure out what it was and not to give into the fresh panic that swallowed her at Darien's name.

"How did you come here?"

She flushed. "Actually, I have no idea."

She was saved from any further answer by a sudden shout. In the still, silent air, it was like a knife stab, but she turned slowly, still careful not to agitate the unicorn prince.

Except – except – her brain was catching up to her heart, and her slow, gentle pivot tore into a spin as the voice clicked into the familiar notch it had carved in her consciousness.

"Darien?" she cried, and then her eyes landed on the black-haired youth running down the green hill slope, his familiar loping run.

"Darien!" she cried again, and her hair got caught under her feet as she jumped up, and she slammed back into the ground, but she didn't even feel any pain; her relief had swept any other feeling from her brain, wiped it clean like a slate.

Distantly, she felt a pair of hands disentangling her hair from her legs and lifting her gently, setting her upright – it was the unicorn prince, her eyes informed her, and she flashed him a happy grin –

Then Darien was there and she launched herself into him.

"You're okay!" she gasped, not just from the tears that were suddenly squeezing hot and quick out of her eyes but from how tight his arms were around her. So many things swept and broke over her: tears, relief, laughter, anger, confusion, surprise. There was no room for all of them. "You're okay…"

Her voice trailed off because he was pushing her away from him suddenly –

But not so far. His hands stopped her a few inches away, and then they were cupping her face and she was looking up into his eyes – no, _he _was looking into hers?

"Darien?" She held tight to his wrists.

He didn't say anything, just ran a gentle finger down one of her deepest scars, the one that slashed across her lips.

Serena's body took a step back. Her hands dropped from Darien's wrists, and she moved away from him. Her hands floated up to cover her face as she stared at him with doe-like eyes. All her relief was zooming away like water sucked down a drain, the blackhole that was those scars –

The expression on his face mirrored hers. "Serena – "

"You – you can see?" Her voice was muffled; she moved her hands and smiled. "You can see again!"

"No – I mean, yes, just here, but – " Darien lifted a hand and dropped it. "Serena, I shouldn't have done that, I'm sorry."

"No harm." Serena smiled again. "You haven't seen them before, of course. Now you have. Looks like I'm wearing a Spiderman mask, huh?"

Her eyes were very wide, and Darien knew it was to keep tears from spilling out. Despite the wretchedness he'd felt at how callous he'd been – especially after the hell he gave Asanuma about her scars – there was a tension released inside him, a wound that stopped bleeding. He could see her, interpret her; finally, again, he could figure out what she was feeling. Yes, he was causing her pain, but he knew he was causing her pain, so he could fix it. God, he could see her. He could see her! He had to force himself to tear his eyes away from her, to push himself back to here and now, and the current predicament –

And the fact that Helios the unicorn was actually Helios the human.

"So where are we?" Serena avoided his gaze – and the unicorn prince's, too. She looked instead at all the flowers, at the horizon, at her bare feet with their chipped pink toe nail polish.

When she felt Darien's gaze leave her at last, she looked up. He was looking at the unicorn prince with a strange expression on his face.

"Helios," he said. It was not quite a question, but it was not a statement either.

"Endymion-sama." Helios knelt, inclining his head very low; the golden horn protruding from his hair was nearly parallel to the ground.

Serena looked back and forth between both of them. "You know each other?"

Helios lifted his head. "This is she, Endymion-sama?"

"Yes." Darien's shoulder brushed Serena's. "This is Serena. Serena, Helios. He takes care of this place, which is called Elysion, which – " His voice turned dry here. " – is apparently an alternate dimension where the dreams of everyone in the universe exist as flowers."

Serena threw him a confused look but quickly switched her gaze back to Helios.

Helios lowered his head again, this time to her. She noticed that he did not also lower his eyes as he had for Darien but kept his light, light blue eyes fixed on her from beneath his bangs. She met the almost colorless orbs, thinking of his white hair and wondering who he was.

She looked at the unicorn prince's golden and white clothing again and something clicked.

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed. "You're the moon princess!" She grabbed his hands. "I told Darien you'd been turned into a boy!"

Helios pitched forward. His horn sank all the way into the ground as his shoulders shook.

Serena let out a startled sound and fell to her knees to help him pull it from the soil, looking up at Darien as she did so. He wore a very, very wide smile, and his eyes were fixed on her. Perhaps with sight, his golden eyes had also gained some sort of power, for she felt a tingle down her spine at the weight of his gaze.

"What is it?" she demanded of him as Helios finally sat back up, clods of dirt in his fair hair. She looked at Helios –

And he, too, was smiling. Very broadly, in a way that transformed his whole, cautious face.

Helios looked past her at Darien. "This is she?" he said.

Darien crouched down beside them, his shoulder again brushing Serena's. "Yes. This is Serena. Serena, this is Helios."

"You're not the moon princess." Disappointment was written across Serena's features.

"I am not of the female persuasion, no." Helios gave her a tentative, shy smile from beneath his fair, dirt-clod filled hair. Serena got the sense of a rubber band that had been stretched close to snapping but was now slack. "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Serena-dono."

"Dono?" echoed Serena.

"Endym – Darien-sama has told me of your actions," said the youth. "If you are not a warrior, then I know of few others who have earned that title."

A pretty blush graced Serena's cheeks. "Um, wow," she said, dipping her head. "Thank you."

"Mushiness aside," said Darien, the brusqueness of his words at odds with the grin on his face, "you never told me about your little split identity, Helios."

Helios smiled again, and this time it was not happy. "It is a gift, Endymion-sama. Or a curse. So many hundreds of years passed. I lost who I was."

"Why didn't you change back?"

Helios turned his head down and away. "I could not remember how."

After a moment, he lifted his eyes again, and they bored into Serena's. "There is some sort of power within you, maiden."

Serena met his eyes. Her blush was gone. Somehow, she thought she knew what he was thinking. She had grown quite familiar with the sound suspicion made in someone's voice.

"I would never hurt Darien," she said steadily.

Something in Helios's eyes shifted.

"I think I know that now," he said softly. "I…feared, before you mistook me for the moon princess." He flicked a glance at Darien. "When you spoke of her I feared she might be High Senshi. But I do not think High Senshi would mistake me for the Moon Princess." He flicked a glance back at Serena. "Unless you are a very good actress, of course."

"High Senshi?" said Darien as Serena said, "Before?"

Serena grabbed Darien's arm. "You've been here before and you never told me?"

"It was going to be a surprise," Darien protested, wincing at her grip. "I was going to bring you on your birthday. Then, well, Fiore showed up."

Serena's grip tightened even further.

"Fiore!" she gasped. She had almost totally forgotten about him in all this revelation. "So how are you here? Did you escape? Did he let you go?"

"Not quite," said Darien, glancing at Helios. "Helios can correct me where I'm wrong, but I basically only come here when I'm asleep."

Helios inclined his head gracefully. "Yes. End- Darien-sama has not yet reached the level of physical entrance into Elysion." He looked at Darien piercingly. "Although he must be congratulated on finding his way here without the Golden Crystal."

His penetrating stare shifted to Serena. "And Serena-dono as well. This is the first time one other than a Golden Crystal bearer has entered Elysion."

"I wasn't aware of that." Darien's golden eyes now moved to Serena also.

"I would have informed you, had you not hastened from here so rapidly on your last visit," Helios said to Darien. "But please continue. What has transpired?"

"Remember the last night I came?" Darien said. To Serena he added, "When Lita found me unconscious, I had gone to Elysion." He told Helios briefly about Fiore's history and appearance, and how he had been kidnapped by him.

"I left the Golden Crystal with Serena – "

"You did that on purpose?" Serena's eyebrows sprang up. "You could have died, you idiot!"

Helios did not at first speak, but his facial muscles moved noticeably beneath his skin. "That was a dangerous thing to do, Endymion-sama."

"Well, I did it, okay?" said Darien to both of them, a little angrily.

"Why did you not come to Elysion if you were so gravely injured?" Helios frowned. "Surely you were unconscious?"

"I think that flower has a way of imprisoning Darien's spirit." Serena chewed on her lip.

Both Darien and Helios looked at her.

"Like at the arcade," said Darien, his voice tightening with dawning realization. "I broke free of it the first night, and you fought if off at the arcade, but she used it more strongly when I was unconscious because I couldn't fight it off – "

"And I didn't try," said Serena with a sinking feeling. "I'm so sorry – "

"Odango, you go guilt-ridden on me right now and I'll make your hair grow another meter," Darien threatened. "You couldn't sense me because I know I couldn't sense you."

"You did not mention a flower before," said Helios.

They both looked at him. "It was on his collar," said Serena. She squinted, trying to remember. "Pink, and she wasn't wearing any clothes – "

Helios's face had suddenly drained of all color. "Endymion-sama," he said. "You said that you sensed organic matter on the Mau's corpse?"

Darien darted a glance at a clueless Serena. "Yes."

"Serena-san, please return the Golden Crystal to Endymion-sama."

Darien slipped his hand over hers, stopping her. His voice held the command of the prince his soul had once been. "Helios, why?"

Helios's eyes were dark. "There is a being called Kisenian Blossom," he said softly, and more quickly than his usual pace. His fingers dug at the soil, like a horse pawing the ground with its hooves. "She is an assassin of Chaos. She has over a dozen High Senshi kills to her credit."

Darien shook his head, remembering his question from earlier. "What is Chaos and what are High Senshi?"

Helios inhaled. His eyes cleared a little. "Chaos is the source of all death and pain in this universe. If you believe there is a God, then Chaos is his mother and his opposite. The universe has been fighting against Chaos since it was born. One being alone, in all time, has ever been strong enough to defeat Chaos, or so it was prophecied. That person was the moon princess. Because of this prophecy, it is Chaos who was believed to be the force behind Beryl's gain of dark power."

This was a lot to absorb, but Helios continued. "The High Senshi are the oldest and most powerful Senshi in the universe. Through their High Council they direct and command all other Senshi. The princess was to be sent to be taught by them when she grew older."

"You're saying the flower Fiore had was Kisenian Blossom," Darien said slowly.

"Yes."

"So Fiore's working for her?"

"Kisenian Blossom's power is that of seeing beings' dreams." Helios knelt and cupped a yellow tulip in his hand, then looked up at them. "And then twisting them." He twisted the flower around slightly. "She worms into her host's soul and entwines with it like a weed with a flower. If Fiore's dream was indeed merely to see you again, she would have twisted that."

"But why would she give a damn about me?" Darien demanded, frustrated.

Fiore looked at him. "Do not forget who you are, Darien-sama. You are Endymion, Guardian of the Land of Dreams, bearer of the Golden Crystal. That crystal, though few know it, rivals the Silver Crystal in terms of power."

"So Kisenian's been sent to assassinate me because of the crystal?"

Helios darted, for some reason, a look at Serena. She stared back at him, blue eyes guileless and worried. "Perhaps."

"Perhaps nothing, Helios." Again Darien's voice rang with the iron of a prince's command. "What aren't you telling me?"

"I am merely _not_ reminding you of what you already know." Helios's voice was stiff. He remained kneeling on the ground and gazed hard up at Darien. "You, reincarnation of Endymion, are the betrothed of the Moon Princess, the only being in the universe with the potential to defeat Chaos."

"Exactly," said Darien. "_She _has the power to defeat Chaos; not me. Shouldn't they be going after her?"

Helios sighed. "It is important that you understand, Darien-sama, not all the prophecy is known. Only fragments that I have heard on the wind. The High Council knows more; the moon's queen may have known all. Perhaps you were yourself a part of the prophecy, and you will play a part in her destruction that Chaos does not want you to play. Or it may be that they believe you know where the princess is so that they may find and kill her."

"Don't they know the Senshi were reincarnated without any memories?" Serena wanted to know.

"They may know, they may not. If they do, they have probably disregarded it. You must understand how famously strong the bond between the prince and princess was. They were able to teleport to each others' sides, share sentences, sight, even life force, to sense each other from across galaxies. I, myself, was scarcely able to believe that Endymion-sama is no longer able to sense the princess."

This speech created a vacuum of silence. At last, Darien spoke, his voice flat. "So Kisenian's using Fiore to get to me, through whom she thinks she'll be able to get to the princess."

"Probably," said Helios.

"Damn it," Darien hissed under his breath. His hand tightened unconsciously around Serena's. He was so sick of this princess, of his friends being constantly hurt for her sake even though they didn't know her; first Serena and her friends, and Lita, and now Fiore? And he had so easily believed Fiore had turned into a scumbag, had so easily turned his back on his friend, when it was really his own fault –

"What is Kisenian doing to you now?" Serena asked him quietly.

He turned his thoughts inside out, like turning a shirt inside out so that he could wear the not-stained side and look presentable; he hid his agitation to look calm.

"I'm in some crystal thing to heal me," he said. "My chest's almost whole again. Kisenian seems to have backed off to let Fiore talk to me. But if she's planning all this, that probably won't last long. If she victimizes dreams, Helios, will she have been manifested here?"

"As a weed entwined around Fiore's dream flower," Helios said. "But there is no quick way of finding it."

"First things first, then," said Darien. "I didn't bring Serena here just to see her."

"Thanks a lot," said Serena, her voice sarcastic. But on her face was a smile, a smile that he could see. He could _see _it.

"Gracious as always," he said, hiding his own small smile. He closed his eyes and released her hand, brushing his fingers through the air. His hand closed around the rope; Serena felt a little shiver inside her ribs. "Follow me."

He began to walk. They made it halfway up the slope of the valley, and he slowed, then sank to his knees. His hand hovered above a fat, closed white bud that looked as though it would burst into bloom at any moment.

"This dream's Odango's," Darien announced, eyes opening.

Helios glanced at him. Darien sensed the pressure of his eyes and looked back.

"I followed our link," he said. "It leads to this one. I'm sure," he answered Helios's unspoken question.

"It's so fat," said Serena, and she looked down at herself, extending her leg in front of her. "Am I that fat?"

"The larger the dream, the larger the flower, usually," said Helios. He looked at Darien. "What do you plan now? Such an event has never before taken place."

"First step is to touch it." Darien seemed strangely ebullient, a wide smile on his face and his eyes sparkling up at Serena. "Go ahead, Odango."

"Okay, but if something weird happens to my flower, it's your fault." Serena reached out tentatively and brushed the tip of the bud with her fingertip. "What's supposed to happen, anyway?"

She looked at Helios, who shrugged eloquently.

Beneath Serena's fingers, the bud suddenly twitched and began to twist, unfurling. The petals peeled away and out one by one.

Serena gasped. Maybe a little because it was a beautiful flower, the spotless white of snow and with streaks of rouge radiating from its heart, but mostly because sparkling in its center was a perfectly round, perfectly gold brooch with a pearl crescent moon filling its center and a rainbow of tiny gems embracing its edge.

"Oh my God," she breathed. Her eyes flicked up to Darien. "Is it – ?"

"Try it," he said, but his grin was wider even than before.

She thrust it into the air, then paused. "Turn around," she told both males.

Helios gave Darien a puzzled look, but Darien motioned that he should just do it.

Serena shoved her arm into the air again.

"MOON POWER!" she shouted.

That achingly familiar rush of power crashed down on her for the first time in months. She'd forgotten how wonderful it felt, like a gentle breeze, a warm fire, and refreshing water all at once. Phantom fingers combed through her hair; boots and gloves encircled her limbs.

All too soon, it faded, and she was left not in her familiar pose but in the same crouch she had transformed in. She stood, fingers smoothing the familiar skirt. It was still as short as ever…but something felt different?

"Can we turn around now?" said Darien.

"Just a second," said Serena, brows furrowed. She flipped up her skirt. "Oh my God! There's shorts! I always wanted shorts!"

"You're not the only one," said Darien, turning around. He touched Helios' shoulder, signaling he could also. "And look, you're not going to trip over your hair anymore."

"What do you mean?" Serena's fingers lifted to her head. She felt around. Her buns were gone. Instead, braided hair wrapped around her head several times. "Wow." She looked at Darien. "Did you do this?"

"I was hoping for something that would make it harder to recognize Serena Tsukino as Sailor Moon," admitted Darien, "but I didn't have anything to do with it at all, so far as I know. That is your dream, right there."

Sailor Moon surreptitiously touched a finger to her face. Smooth skin, scarless skin. No, no one would recognize her as Serena Tsukino.

Helios spoke at last. "You knew this was her dream?"

"I figured it was something having to do with being able to transform again so she could protect people." Darien lifted an eyebrow at Serena – Sailor Moon – who was still wonderingly running her hand over her tiara.

"And how does this further your situation?" asked Helios.

"Well, I can't save myself," said Darien with a mildness that seemed uncharacteristic of him.

Apparently Helios noticed this too. "It is unlike you to endanger a friend."

This twisted Darien's face into a grimace. He turned his head away.

"Obviously, Fiore is a victim here," he said, trying to shove his hands deep into his pockets. He still wore swimming trunks, so there was no place to put them. His arms had to settle, instead, with hunching tensely at his side. "I'm no good at saving people. All I can do is hurt. With Serena there, Fiore's got a chance."

"I see," said Helios, and his voice was quiet.

Sailor Moon looked between both of them, but her eyes lingered on Darien. An acidic mixture, like soda mixed with lemonade, had filled her at his words. How could she not tingle with warmth when he said such things about her, expressed such trust in her –

How could she not feel a cold weight upon her when another being's life was placed on her shoulders?

There was no time to worry about it, for Darien suddenly stiffened.

She looked at Helios. "I think Kisenian's trying for him."

"I – t's okay," Darien gritted out. "Odango – "

"Already doing it," said Moon, and her eyes were unfocused as she clawed at the moss-like aura quickly swallowing the rope. "She's – "

"Stronger this time," managed Darien. "I think she's getting angry. You should probably stop – "

"Don't go yet!" Moon's voice was sharp. "How can I get to you?"

Darien's head did not move, but Helios crouched. "I will convey her safely, Endymion-sama." His limbs began to lengthen, his body expanding, feathers sprouting. Only the horn and eyes remained the same when he was through.

"Can you change back?" asked Sailor Moon anxiously.

"I have faith in you to help me, Serena-dono." Seeing his lips make the words was strange for Serena. "Please climb on."

Sailor Moon moved slowly, stiltedly. "Darien – "

"I'm not going to let a flower kill me, Odango." Darien's voice was strained nonetheless. "Go, Helios. I'm going to try to find Fiore's flower."

"With care, my prince." Helios bowed his head and shot off. Moon yelped, squeezing her eyes tight, and dug her fingers into the strong muscles of his neck.

"Sorry!" she gasped, sure she had hurt him.

He did not reply. She dared to crack an eyelid open, and they were surrounded by blue sky, surrounded by floating pink petals. Below her was the maze of Tokyo; she could see Starlight Tower below her foot. Necklaces of lights adorned the city in the dusk.

"Wait!" she cried to Helios. "Can we pick someone up?"

"If it will help my prince, anything, Serena-dono," Helios said. She felt his pulse racing in his artery below her palm. "We also need to return you to your body."

"Oh, yeah!" She felt a little dazed by the realization that her body was somewhere many meters below them. "Um, two birds with one stone, then. Down there," she directed, pointing at her house and trying to figure out how the whole out-of-body thing worked but giving up. "With the orange roof."

"Hold on." They took a sharp downward slope that stole the breath from her lungs like Darien's smile.

"Land there!" she shouted when she could breathe again, pointing to the branch beside her window. Oh, what a strange feeling to see her own body sitting there… "I'm going into that window."

"I do not see anyone else." Helios stuck his long head through the open window. A pink petal landed on his nose, and he snorted it violently away.

Sailor Moon reached out a tentative hand to touch her body. Suddenly, she was staring up at Helios, instead of down at him, and she looked down to see that she and her body were one again. Her transformation had stayed on.

"You will," she told Helios in a very late answer, climbing down from the window seat and reaching for where Lita had been. "Lita. Lita!"

"Wha – huh?"

"Luna Pen, please Sailor Jupiter visible again," said Sailor Moon, and Lita, hair tousled above her tiara, became visible again.

"Wha happened?" she yawned. Her eyes sharpened. More alertly, she demanded, "What happened to your hair?"

"Answers later, movement now," said Sailor Moon, tugging her up. "C'mon, c'mon…"

"What about the flower monsters?" asked Jupiter as Moon clambered out the windowsill.

"I think we'll be taking care of that," said Moon, just in time for Helios to say, "These petals are Kisenian's work."

Jupiter gaped. "What the hell?" (Except she didn't say hell, she said something else. Something that rhymed with the word for what hockey players chase.)

"Lita!" exclaimed Sailor Moon reproachfully.

"You I recognize," said Helios as Lita reluctantly climbed onto his back. "I am Helios, Sailor Jupiter."

"When they know who I am, that's usually a mark against them," said Sailor Jupiter to Sailor Moon.

"I'll explain to her!" Moon told Helios. "Let's just go!"

Helios shot up into the Moon put her face very close to Jupiter's ear and still had to shout to tell her about the events of the night.

"So we're flying up to this talking flower's comet on a unicorn that's actually a guardian of a dimension that Darien is king of," summarized Jupiter with her usual sarcasm. "Makes perfect sense. Only lapse of logic I see is how we're going to enter the vacuum of space without space suits or oxygen."

"I have magic to counteract that," said Helios. His voice was easier to hear now that they were further up into the atmosphere and there was less wind.

Jupiter's lip twisted. "You'll excuse me if I don't want to trust my life to a unicorn I just met. No offense."

"I think Helios is a little too delicate for your bluntness, Lita," Moon whispered to Jupter.

"If he can take Darien, he can take me," said Jupiter.

"I will not insult you by lying that you do not intimidate me, Senshi," Helios replied. "For you do. I have given my word to my prince, however, and I have seen enough of his reincarnation to know that he will disembowel me should Serena-dono be injured through any fault of mine. You can trust me if only for that reason."

"Hmph." Jupiter settled back, apparently satisfied, and transformed.

As the atmosphere grew thin to almost nothing and there were no particles for light to reflect off of, a faint golden glow became visible around them.

"That's keeping us alive?" said Jupiter.

"Sailor Moon appears small and weak, Senshi," said Helios mildly. "Have you found her to be what she appears?"

Behind Serena, Jupiter hmphed again. "He's related to Shields somehow alright."

Serena smiled, but a pit was growing in her stomach as they hurtled toward the comet. Butterflies were fluttering in the pit, dozens of them, filling her until she was sure she would throw them up. If Kisenian was an assassin of Chaos, then she would be even more powerful than Beryl had been. And she hadn't stood a second against Beryl. How could she do anything against Kisenian – _and _keep Darien's friend safe like he believed she could?

"Courage, Serena-dono," murmured Helios beneath her. "You will not defeat anyone if you are defeating yourself."

Serena mustered a tight smile. "You are a lot like Darien. So calm while I'm freaking out."

"I wish that I could do more," said Helios sadly. "My prince…is very lost. He hides it from you."

"He hides a lot of things from me," replied Serena, with equal sadness tinting her voice.

"No longer allow him to." Helios turned his head even as they sped across the comet's surface to stare her in the eyes with one of his. "You are destined to die without him, and I believe he will join them if you are torn from him."

"What?" Serena stared at him.

But then they were coming up on the center of the comet.

L

"Alin." Anne's fingers were tight around her brother's arm. "Are you _sure_ we should have come? If Kisenian finds out we followed her, she'll kill us."

"With Kisenian Blossom going after the prince, all the Senshi will be distracted." Alin put his free hand to the Makaiju's brittle trunk, stroking the bark. "No one will notice us sapping a few beings for energy. This works perfectly for us, Anne." He lifted his flute close to his lips. "Those wooded mountains look good for us to plant, right?" Without waiting for an answer, he touched his flute to his lips and began to play. The Makaiju floated to the right, down, toward the mountains Alin had seen.

Anne swayed forward. The melody of Alin's flute affected her, too; she had too little energy for it not to. Only Alin's arm around her waist kept her from stepping off the Makaiju's limb and falling into space.

She could feel her brother's muscles trembling against her body. They were both so weak… the journey through space would have killed them if they had not had Fiore's strange, energy-filled rose. Yet that had not lasted long between the two of them plus the Makaiju in the freezing, lightless vacuum of space. They would be dead within hours if they did not find energy soon.

They were hovering only a little higher than the tree line when Makaiju's roots began to writhe. That was the only warning; then fire shot out of the trees. A huge, roaring swathe of flame.

Half of the Makaiju was incinerated in that one last blast. There was simply not enough energy to hold its molecules together. Alin and Anne might have lasted a few moments longer, but a second attack came suddenly from the opposite direction. A different aura than the first, it was a concentration of pure energy. It vaporized both the aliens and the huge tree they had perched upon.

L


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** Again, thank you for reading. Hopefully you haven't been disappointed and there isn't much disparity between this season and the last. (P.S. Where's Mercury? She's somewhere. So is Venus. And…well, we'll wait until Season 2 _really_ begins, okay?)

Last chapter of the Fiore arc. More to come soon!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Sailor Moon.

L

Subject to Change

Season 2

Part Three: Waking Up

L

The trip took longer than Fiore had expected. The Makaiju was not where it had been when he left; it had moved. He followed the constant trail of pain it left inside him and finally, came to a dark corner of space that had been ravaged by the Senshi Wars.

He barely recognized the Makaiju when he saw it. It had shrunk to half its old size, and its bark was gray and brittle. No leaves hung from it; it was naked and bare. Patches of rot stained its trunk. It was like coming home from vacation to find your mother missing her arms and covered in bruises.

He cried out and sped toward it – then something stepped into his path. He slammed into it.

"Fiore," said a contemptuous voice.

He looked up. "Alin?"

"And Anne!" His older sister appeared beside his brother. They both crossed their arms and glared down at him. "So the deserter's finally come back."

"What's wrong with Makaiju?" he pleaded.

"It got deserted by all its children but us, that's what happened!" snapped Anne. "What's that in your hand?"

Fiore's fingers tightened. He would share the energy with Makaiju, but these two didn't deserve one drop of Darien's beautiful power! He hadn't given it to them!

"Calm down, Anne," said Alin, ever the pacifier of his malicious sister. "If that's for the Makaiju, Fiore, don't bother. Any energy given to it just makes it sicker."

"What kind of energy have you been giving it?" Fiore demanded, looking at it again. Over the past weeks, its call had been growing fainter in his brain, and he could see now why. It was _dying_.

"Every kind there is," Alin answered. "We've taken from every species, from Senshi, even. None of it works!"

"Of course it doesn't it you_ take_ it!" Fiore cried. "The Makaiju has to be _given _energy, freely!"

"Shut up!" Anne slapped him. "What do you know, anyway? You haven't been here! You don't know what it's been like! No one GIVES their energy anymore. Everyone's too scared and selfish – like YOU."

"Anne." Alin placed a hand on his sister's shoulder. "You're going to wake – "

"_Too late_." A pink smoke wisped over Anne's mouth, binding it shut. Fiore stared and took a step back. Through his mind raced all the stories he'd heard of the Chaos creatures that seeped out of cracks in the fabric of the universe.

"_What is all this noise_?" The pink smoke undulated in time with the soft voice.

"Kisenian Blossom." Alin went to his knees and bowed his head. "We apologize. Our brother arrived, and we – "

"_Another tree brat_?" The pink smoke expanded, stretched toward Fiore. He blinked, and suddenly there were arms around his neck and a chest pressed against his back. A mouth at his ear. An intense perfume overwhelming him… "_Oh, my…what's this energy you've got in your hand_?"

Fiore clenched it harder, but the smoke snaked between his fingers. The arms around his neck tightened. "_Oooh…I've been waiting for someone like you_."

Fiore threw a glance at his siblings, but they seemed as frightened and confused as he was. Anne stood close to Alin, clutching his arm.

"_You see…Fiore, is it? Oh, what a delicious name_." The perfume was practically blasting him; he felt his senses failing. "_You see, Fiore…I'm an assassin. And I work for someone called Chaos…_" His body stiffened. "_Oh, yes, you know that name, don't you? Then you know that I can help you. You want to make all those people pay for how they treated…Darien, is it? Don't you? You want to make them hurt like he did? Make them…_lonely." She leaned closer to his ear and breathed, "_I can do that for you_."

_When you receive, you must give._ Enlightenment spread through Fiore's soul. This was how he could do it – this was how he could repay Darien! Make all the beings who ignored him pay!

A flower materialized in his palm, pink and delicate and seductive. The perfume was heavenly. Heavenly and powerful, just like Darien…

_I will give you everything_, it whisperd to him. _All you have to do is give me to him. I _am_ the most beautiful flower…_

L

Suddenly, one day, he was alive.

He woke up with no one around him. He woke up in an empty room, in a white bed. He knew he was alive because, well, he simply knew, didn't he?

He had fallen back asleep. He had dreamed of screams and blood, hands grasping for him. He had woken up screaming. There were more people around him, all in white holding him down, and he screamed even more. He didn't know how long his screams had lasted; long enough that when finally one of the people held up a needle, his voice was too hoarse to express the fresh terror erupting within him. A sharp, short pain, and he slid into the reaching hands and blood again.

There is no time in dreams.

Dreams warp time, stretching it or squeezing it. He was trapped in the world of rattling almost-corpses and thickening fog for as long as the tranquilizer lasted, and that was eternity.

He forced his way free early, and when he woke, there was enough tranquilizer still left in his blood that he could only lie and stare, eyes red rimmed, at the clock on the wall. There were strange colors reflected on it.

His heart had begun to thump. The colors were moving, swirling. His heart began to beat so fast it was skipping. The colors formed a face; the clock's hands were reaching for him, and blood was streaming down the wall beneath the clock –

The door slammed open. Tears were streaming from his eyes, but he could not move, still gripped in the tranquilizer's paralysis. The people who had held him down and paralyzed him before were streaming in again now, shouting and yelling, and the hand was closer to him, inching closer, blood dripping from its closed fist to his skin, hot and burning –

Electric pain buckled his body. A shriek rose and died in his throat, its soul emerging as a puff of air from his parted mouth. His body buckled again – he burst into loud, wailing tears. He tried to pull them off of him, but his hands were like flowers flopping uselessly in a wind.

They ran more tubes and wires all through him, then, and one of them stayed to sit beside his bed. They tried to talk to him, but he cringed away, avoiding their gaze as if it was the most important thing in the world. His eyes flicked to that clock, again and again, checking. But it was again only a clock, its only face that of twelve numbers.

The person beside his bed noticed his eyes' fearful flicking toward the clock, and he called someone in to take it away. He relaxed a little bit.

It was a bad idea.

He was drowsing, suspended in that halfway hammock between sleep and awake. The hands could not get him if he did not sleep.

It was dark. The light from the machines, and a crack of light from the hallway were the only exceptions.

Something made his spine stiffen. His breathing, made audible by the tube beneath his nose, quickened, roughened. He stared at his covers very hard; if you could not see the monsters, they were not there.

_Wake up. Wake up!_

There was a hand inside him, squeezing a rib. His eyes were impossibly wide with the terror that flooded him. The hand reached through him and into his hand as though it were a glove it was pulling on. It pushed him up from the mattress and turned him around.

A shadow stared at him, crouched on the floor in front of the window.

He screamed. The hand inside his hand squeezed. There was bright light.

The people rushed in.

"What's wrong?"

Arms seized him and slid him back to the pillow, pressing at his wrists, his throat. "Darien, what's wrong?"

He fought away from them, pointing at the shadow now lying crumpled on the floor. They looked where he was pointing, but turned back to them.

"Shhh," they said. "There's nothing there. Nothing's there."

And then they gave him another tranquilizer.

Tears streaked his face when he woke up the next day. He pushed back the bile in his throat and looked at his hand. No one else's hand was in it now. He concentrated and squeezed it into a fist.

Nothing happened. No flash of light. Despair flooded him, darkness crowding in around his eyes. He uncurled his fingers.

A flower sat within it. Small, ragged at its petal edges, as though someone had torn it and then squeezed it together.

The first apparition he saw that didn't try to kill him was Fiore.

He found him in the rain one day and dragged him back to the hospital, planning to make him tell why all these things had happened to him. He had learned to make flowers that had very sharp stems and could make people bleed. He had tried it on himself, and on a nurse he really didn't like. They had both bled, though his blood had disappeared in a sparkle of light, and the nurse's hadn't.

When the strange boy he'd picked up woke up, however, he was crying. Tears were leaking from his strange red eyes, and he was making quiet noises.

He glanced at the spot on the wall where the clock had been, but nothing was happening. He looked at the flowers he kept under his bed, and they shrugged at him.

It was raining outside, and he padded in his hospital slippers to the window. He stared very hard at the clouds. A fork of lightning carved the shape of a tree in the shadows of a cloud.

He returned to stand beside the bed. "What's wrong?" he said. "You miss a tree?"

They became friends after that.

The people in the hospital never noticed Fiore, just as they had never noticed the shadow on the floor. He had been too afraid to move it, but fear that paralyses one person turns into laughter between two people. Together, he and Fiore dragged the light black heap out of his room and down onto a landing in one of the stairwells. They waited until someone came through to watch and see if they would trip over it, but they walked through it as if it wasn't there.

When he dreamed, Fiore woke him up before he started screaming. The doctors stopped giving him sleeping medication. They played outside in the hospital gardens, and he laughed when the other children could not see Fiore. Before, they had been the ones to shun him; now, he could shun them. With Fiore, he grew stronger, braver, tougher. When one is alone, one does not hide one's weaknesses. When one is with others, one hides one's weaknesses. In that alone, Fiore was the one who made it possible for him to survive.

Fiore was his first anchor. The first rope he found to tie himself down to an identity. The first person with whom he felt alive. He had melted the ice hiding the soil so that someday Darien's life could become a garden instead of remaining a barren tundra.

L

In the middle of the comet was a bare patch of rock in the middle of a solid pink field of flowers. Fiore stood in the middle of it, hair the same shade as the flowers as it fell down his back. Behind him floated a huge crystal, dark and at least ten feet tall. It was apparently filled with liquid, for Darien floated within it, suspended. Around the both of them were dozens, perhaps hundreds of the flower-spiders like the ones on Earth.

"GO!" Helios shouted, and bucked.

Sailor Moon, ready, pushed off from his back even as his buck thrust her up. She drew her tiara from her forehead as she somersaulted, stretching it with her mind into a sword and deflecting all the attacks – mainly root limbs – hurled at her as she hurtled down toward Darien. She could smell the ozone as Jupiter cocooned herself in lightning to shield her own body. That meant this comet had some small atmosphere, then. She congratulated herself on that realization. So Earth Space did come in handy, after all, as Darien had promised her it would.

In that small moment of distraction, a single root penetrated her defense, and it whipped her into the field of flowers.

"Darn it," she muttered, rolling and leaping to her feet once more. She held her elongated tiara before her again, like a bo staff on guard.

Roots flashed out like tendrils once more. She batted them away, each stroke chopping off several and leaving them to writhe on the ground before her. To her shocked dismay, new roots zoomed out of them like pimples on a teenager's face, and grabbed her ankles. Then they slithered up her like electrified snakes at lightning speed, pinning her arms to her torso and her legs together.

A flick of her wrist cut through the roots – but they sprouted new growth again and merely wrapped around her again – and again and again and again as she repeated the process.

"Tiara Stardust!" she grunted, arching her neck to keep it out of the stranglehold of a particularly eager root. Sparkles showered down, and the vines crumbled to ash. Moon launched into a power jump again before all the remnants had even fallen from her, eager to escape the new roots that were sure to follow.

This was no good. She needed a spare second to tug on the rope, to find Darien. She couldn't do that while she had to focus on the Victoria's Secret Models From Space.

"Jupiter!" she shouted, dropping down to the ground again and calling 'Tiara Stardust!" at the same time to shoot stardust from the edge of the tiara sword's blade.

"Coming!" Jupiter hollered, and four aliens later she was in front of Serena. "Hey, let me show you a new attack I learned – COCONUT CYCLONE!"

Sailor Moon smiled at her, but her eyes were already sliding out of focus as she reached for the rope.

Darien's sense was nearly hidden from her, like a statue completely grown over with moss. She began to claw at it. It was like shoveling water; it just poured back in.

"STOP IT!" Sailor Moon screamed at last, perspiration flung from her forehead as she spun around to face Fiore with Kisenian on his lapel.

Her sword pulsed gold, and sparkles pulsed outward in a huge ripple. Every flowerwoman shrieked and fluttered to the ground as a limp pink flower.

There was a horrible, multi-voiced laugh, and Kisenian unfurled on Fiore's lapel. "Stop what, my dear?"

"Let him BE!" Moon's voice cracked in the middle; she was breathless from the exertion of digging so hard. She glared at Kisenian. She had not felt kindly disposed toward the flower-being the first time she had seen it, but if she had felt dislike then, that was nothing to the nauseating anger that swept over her now. To take someone's dream and use it to destroy them, to destroy what they loved…it was the cruelest, most evil action she had ever heard of. Even Beryl, and what she had done to Zoicite and to Mina did not seem to compare to this.

Kisenian flashed fangs at Sailor Moon in a smile.

"Don't worry, child." Her laugh had the sound of a giggle but the derision of a cackle. "The prince still hasn't let me reach him under all that. He's still in that little hideout of his." She laughed again. "But don't worry, I haven't given up."

Sailor Moon flicked a glance at Helios. A bright red cut stood out garishly on his white front flank, but he returned her gaze quite steadily. He blurred from sight.

"What is it doing?" demanded Kisenian sharply.

Sailor Moon smiled. "Don't worry."

Kisenian returned her grin with a look of poison. "About a disfigured little thing like you, I wouldn't. Would you, Fiore?" She tilted her tiny, delicate head up toward the alien.

"The only way an ugly girl like you could have caught Darien is through witchery." Fiore glared at Sailor Moon through red eyes.

His gaze was like fire on her face, and she knew that somehow they knew she was the scarred girl from the arcade. And their words hurt, hurt like salt in a wound. Her eyes stung despite herself. It seemed ridiculous for someone as high up as a Chaos assassin to insult her looks, and that made it hurt even more.

"What should we do to her, Fiore, darling?"

Fiore's eyes stayed on Sailor Moon's. "Kill her."

The next events happened in rather quick succession.

Fiore gasped and fell to the ground. Pink smoke gushed out of him, and the flower on his lapel fluttered to the ground. Gold light flashed, and crystal shattered outward.

Sailor Moon crouched and shielded her eyes with an arm. The rest of her face she left uncovered because what difference would more scars make?

No shards reached her, however; she heard them clatter to the ground. She opened her eyes.

Tuxedo Mask stood dripping on the stone, his mask and hat gone but a spiky green and pink weed gripped in his gloved hand.

"Darien!" The gasp came from Fiore. The clothing he wore was blue now, no longer scarlet, without the flower on his chest.

Something nudged Moon's shoulder. She looked. Helios was at her shoulder, his horse jaw brushing hers, watching Darien and Fiore intently.

Sailor Moon looked around. She found Sailor Jupiter a few meters away. Their eyes met, but both girls wordlessly agreed not to move.

"Darien," said Fiore again.

Tuxedo Mask took a step forward, but he did not move closer to Fiore. He looked like a lost dog, wet hair dripping in his glowing eyes.

"You fear me." Fiore's voice held the sadness that Sailor Venus's had held when she spoke to Jupiter.

"Can you blame me?" said Darien.

His voice, too, held sadness. It was a voice Serena had never heard him use before. In Darien's voice she had heard wryness, amusement, anger, rage, irritation, weariness, fear. But not sadness. It was like turning around at the grocery store one day and finding a brand-new flavor of ice cream sitting in the freezer. A very simple flavor, like chocolate. A flavor you couldn't believe you'd never tasted before.

Perhaps Fiore thought the same thing. He began to cry. Soft, tearing sounds with slow, trickling tears. Serena realized he was only their age, perhaps even younger than she was. She thought of the distant look on Darien's face when he had talked about being in the hospital. She thought of how lonely he must have been, though he hadn't said it aloud, and she thought of how she had felt, months ago, crying alone in her bed because she didn't have friends anymore. She pictured a young Darien, smiling his first smile ever as he played with a young Fiore.

_With Serena there, Fiore's got a chance._

She looked at Fiore. Tears were trickling down his face.

"I went home…" He inhaled shakily. His words were punctuated by shuddering, drags of breath. "…and she was there. Makaiju was dying, and Kisenian Blossom saw your rose, Darien. She found you because of me, and I'm sorry – I came here and you didn't remember me, you were so happy and you had people and I was still _alone_ – !"

His voice broke again. "I wanted to protect you like you took care of me, but it was my fault – it was my fault – "

Serena never believed that Fiore made this heartbreaking speech to distract them. From the very bottom of her heart, she believed Fiore's sincerity, and nothing ever convinced her otherwise.

But whether he intended it or not, Fiore's speech did distract Darien from the weed wriggling slowly out of his fist. And Darien's lapse in attention haunted him for the rest of life.

The weed hit the ground and disappeared. Pink light shot from Fiore's crying eyes. His back went rigid, spine straining against his skin like a ridge of mountains. Pink tendrils entwined with his limbs like a lover's embrace, and Kisenian's head, in full size, propped itself on his shoulder, hair spilling around his neck.

"Hello," she purred.

Helios took a step forward, in front of Sailor Moon.

Fiore, veins corded in his neck, let out a strangled howl. Kisenian laughed, the mirthful sound mixing with the anguished in an unholy blend.

"Struggle all you want, little flower," she said. "You don't have the power to escape me. I'll make you kill the girls in front of him, and then you can torture him yourself until we get the information we need." She glanced up, lashes long. "Unless you'd like to just tell us where the princess is now, Your _Majesty_?"

Darien's teeth were clenched. Fiore made another noise, and Darien took a half-step forward.

"Let him go!"

"Tell me where she is," said Kisenian, perfectly unintimidated.

Sailor Moon stepped forward; Helios took another to stay in front of her. "We're just reincarnations! We don't know where she is!"

"Close your mouth, little peasant." Kisenian's lip curled in disdain. "Of course you don't. All you are is an extra wall to protect the princess. The human sacrifices are given orders, not information." She frowned suddenly. "Stop!"

Fiore, during this little exchange, had been lurching, wobbling drunkenly closer to Sailor Moon.

"_Stop_!" commanded Kisenian again. More voices were in her voice, as though the extra voices added pressure and power.

"I'm…going to…kill her," Fiore rasped. A string of saliva swung from his lower lip.

Kisenian relaxed slightly. "See what a willing pet?" she said to Darien, stroking Fiore's cheek with a finger as she spoke. "You should select your friends more carefully, Prince."

Fiore was stumbling closer and closer. Sailor Moon had her tiara drawn, but her inides roiled. She couldn't kill him! He was a victim! He was Darien's friend! He was trying to kill her for God's sake! That didn't matter! It did! She didn't have to kill him, just incapacitate him! She didn't know how to just incapacitate people!

She blinked sweat from her eyes and realized that during her internal debate Helios had moved in front of her, a solid wall of muscle and feathers. His horn was lowered threateningly. No, she couldn't allow Helios to be hurt –

Her tiara! She gripped her tiara.

"Twilight Flash!" she shouted.

Light burst out, but nothing happened.

Kisenian laughed at her. Her laugh was many laughs. "That may have worked against Beryl's magic," she said. "But I am twentyfold what that whore was."

Sailor Moon's hands were slick with sweat around her sword. She looked at Darien; he stared at nothing, eyes golden and blank.

Fiore suddenly let out a choked roar and charged.

Helios's wings shot outward, throwing Sailor Moon backward as she darted forward.

Then a wet, pulpy noise filled her ears – lasting only a second, but her shellshocked mind played it over and over again for her.

Helios's wings lowered to his sides. Sailor Moon was able to see what she had heard.

Kisenian Blossom inhaled a long, rattling breath, blood a small trickle from the side of her rosebud mouth. Her face was pure shock and rage.

Fiore's was pure relief relief; though blood splashed from his mouth with each exhalation, he was smiling. Helios's horn protruded from his back.

Fiore had impaled himself on Helios's horn.

"…Darien…" he croaked out. "Sorry…"

His eyes dropped closed.

Helios reared suddenly, Fiore's body swinging like a pendulum from his horn. "Catch her – !"

His voice emerged in a piercing horse's neigh. Pink smoke had begun to curl from Fiore's body.

"What's happening?" Jupiter demanded.

"Helios?" Tuxedo Mask was moving toward them quickly, cane in front of him. "Fiore? Fiore!" He ran forward. "Sailor Moon?"

"Stay away from her!" Helios snapped.

He shook the prone body from his horn, flinging it to the ground, and lowered his blood-slick horn at Sailor Moon.

Sailor Moon stared at him, her tiara drawn into sword form and pointing at him.

"What the eff are you doing?" Jupiter thundered. She bolted forward, hands outspread and crackling with energy to protect Moon.

Sailor Moon swept her arm out in a rapid motion. It hit Jupiter's stomach and sent her flying.

"Back!" Helios ordered sharply again.

Jupiter rolled to her feet, swiping the side of her mouth with a fist. Her eyes burned bright green. "What's happening?"

"Kisenian has taken over Sailor Moon."

"_Oh_!" Kisenian's multi-voiced voice spilled from Sailor Moon's lips. Triumph rang in her voices like a carillon of bells. "I – "

Her voice cut off. Sailor Moon's eyes swirled, white chasing black chasing blue. The gem in her tiara glowed like a searchlight.

"What's happening?" Jupiter had moved back to Helios. For all her bravado in battle, she hung back when things were no longer physical. Her face was pale. "What's happening to her?"

"I do not know." Helios, too, hung back. "I have never seen Kisenian before. She may be having to fight Serena-dono, or she may be savoring the experience."

"Damnit," Jupiter whispered. 'Damnit." She looked around. "Where's Shields?!"

Helios had sensed his prince enter Elysion several seconds ago. It had been hard not to; his prince's enraged presence had been spewing rage like a volcano. He had never felt his prince with such an aura before, and it unsettled him. Lack of control was what that fury revealed to him; not strength but weakness. Endymion-sama's reincarnation was not strong enough for power he contained.

Sailor Moon screamed, sinking to her knees. Her hands were buried deep in her hair, palms dug into her eyeballs. Pink hands slid up her arms to cover her gloved hands.

"Oooohhhh," Kisenian's multi-voice sighed.

"STOP IT!" Jupiter roared. Electricity crackled all around her body, but she dared not release it for fear of hurting Moon.

"What is all of this?" Kisenian languorously rubbed her face against Sailor Moon, against her cheeks, her hair. Her eyes glowed beneath half-closed lids. "All these walls, darling…oh…"

She stiffened suddenly, and another scream erupted from Sailor Moon. It cut off as suddenly as it began; Kisenian cupped a pink hand around Moon's jaw.

"Oh…" breathed the chorus of voices, and Kisenian's eyes fluttered shut. Sailor Moon's eyes opened, and they flashed crimson.

"So you spoke truth." The chorus spoke, but this time it came from Sailor Moon's mouth, with her voice woven into the unison. "This is – "

Pink smoke exploded.

Sailor Moon was hidden in the billowing cloud of pink. Sailor Jupiter shouted out and ran forward, but Helios extended a wing in the same method of prevention eh had used on Serena. Jupiter hit his wing and bounced backward.

She snarled at Helios, lightning crackling alive in her fist, but then a huge gale of wind whipped up. It slapped her hair into her face and directed her attention back to the cloud of smoke.

The smoke was gone. The sudden hurricance-force wind had whipped it all away. All the pink flowers had vanished, too. Only the fragments of the giant crystal Darien had burst out of remained.

Sailor Moon was a heap on the craggy rock, a tiny hill of white limbs and golden hair. There was no hint of pink anywhere around her body; Jupiter could not see her face; her eyes, whether they were their usual blue or not, could not be seen.

Jupiter rushed forward. Something grabbed her ankle and yanked her backward; she toppled to the ground. Immediately her eyes flew to her leg, and there was a green vine wrapped around it. Kisenian _was _still alive, then…

Then another presence pressed against her mind, and she turned. Tuxedo Mask stood a few meters away from her, his eyes blazing gold out of his face and the green vine's other end gripped in one of his hands. And in his other hand…

It dawned on her, in the receding tide of adrenaline. The wind had come from Shields. She saw the black ash that coated his white glove.

"Kisenian Blossom," said Helios softly.

Jupiter thought back to how Shields had made a tree nod and water jump. If she had not see that, she probably would not have believed Shields had turned into ash the flower that had been able to control Serena, but she had seen it, and so she could believe it. Found it very easy to believe, in fact. Scarily easy to believe.

It edged the rage she felt toward him for stopping her from reaching Serena with something almost like fear.

Sailor Moon did not move. Jupiter stood. The vine fell away like a dead hand.

No, not Sailor Moon, she realized, walking toward the crumpled girl. Serena. Her detransformation had faded into her frilly pink pajamas.

Shuffling and tapping sounds reached her ears. She glanced toward Tuxedo Mask and found him shambling clumsily across the uneven rocky ground, his cane sweeping and bumping back and forth in front of him. It was an incredible juxtaposition: the tremendous display of power he had just shown, and now he hobbled along like a helpless old man.

She did not move to help him.

He reached them at last and knelt. Jupiter, despite the vine trick, hung back and let him wordlessly lift Serena and cradle her against his chest.

"Is she okay?" she said roughly.

Tuxedo Mask's transformation faded as he stood and began stumbling again, this time toward Helios. Serena's unbunned hair dragged over the ground behind him like a wedding dress's train.

"Kisenian's dead," was all he said.

Helios took a step forward, then another. Jupiter mechanically followed, her eyes flicking to the still body of Fiore a few meters away.

Tuxedo Mask's steps were shambling, his feet brushing over the ground to check every step before he made it. Helios met him halfway, and he lifted Sailor Moon onto the unicorn's back, then stepped back.

Helios turned very still suddenly, as though carved from stone. "Endymion-sama, are you certain you wish to – "

But Shields had already stepped back. His look was apparently answer enough, for Helios silenced.

Jupiter did not see what that answering look was, though, she was gripping Serena's clammy hands and staring up at her.

"Look," she said, spinning around to growl at Shields. "_Is she okay_?"

Shields moved his arm; the Golden Crystal fell into his hand. He took a step away –

"Endym - Darien-sama," said Helios again. "The comet will impact the planet."

Darien stopped in his path, his shoulders stiff.

He lifted the hand not holding the crystal and clenched his fist, not turning around.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the ground shook. Jupiter grabbed a handful of Helios's mane, gripping Sailor Moon's hand with the other.

"Please climb on, Sailor Jupiter," said Helios before her heart had even started beating again.

She swallowed, obeying. "What did he- ?"

Then they were already in flight, swooping below the comet and she did not need to ask the question anymore.

A long, slender column of ice extended from within Earth's atmosphere and cupped the bottom of the comet in a a spiky bowl of ice.

Jupiter licked her lips. "Did…did that come out of the ocean?"

Helios did not look back at her. "Darien-sama summoned it from the Pacific. It froze in the vacuum of space."

Jupiter nodded slowly. She remembered Serena sitting in front of her and propped her up against her, holding her limp body carefully.

"Well," she said, as if Serena were awake and she was trying to make her laugh. "Guess we don't have to worry about the polar ice caps melting and drowning us all anymore, right?"

L

Sailor Mars saw the explosion of dark gold energy incinerate the tree and the humanoids in it. Over that explosion in her mind's eye was superimposed the image of two women appearing behind her. She turned, and a split second later, they landed in crouches on the ground below her tree branch.

They wore fukus, both of a dark blue. They differed only in the color of their ribbons: one sea blue and the other dull gold.

Rei leapt down from her tree branch. She stood and regarded them guardedly.

They, too, rose to their feet.

"A destructive attack," said the Senshi with the lighter bow. Her hair was a peculiar shade of honey blonde. It curled down her back in soft waves. "Does it burn your hands as well?"

Rei stared harder at them, her fingers curling. How did they know of the burns her attacks seared on the skin of her fingertips?

"Fire is the most double-edged of swords," said the woman. "You are lucky not to have been consumed by it yet."

"She looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth." The other Senshi spoke for the first time. "Are we too uncivilized for you, Senator's daughter?"

Rei's eyes widened just a fraction.

"Ah, a reaction at last." The second Senshi smiled and stood. She took a step forward and cupped Rei's cheek in a large hand. "Are we, Miss Hino?"

There was a magnetic voice clamping Rei in place. She could not move. She stared past the Senshi's eyes at her hair. It was the same dull buff color as the other Senshi's, spiky at the ends where it had been cropped short at her neck. She saw, in her mind's eye, Asananuma's bright blonde hair and tight curls.

"Do not scare her, Haruka." The honey Senshi came up beside them and slid a hand over Rei's other cheek. "See her, trembling like a rabbit."

"I'm not trembling," Rei said.

"Your eyes are tearing," replied the woman. "I can feel the water beading there. Will you cry, little one?"

"I'll spit," said Rei, and she did, nabbing the taller Senshi in the ear with a glob of saliva.

Grimacing, the Senshi lifted a gloved hand and swiped it away. "Spirit, eh, Michiru?"

"Indeed, Haruka." The long-haired Senshi's hand slipped from Rei's face and twined through her arm. "You will get along with us just fine, Rei Hino. Just fine."

L

Asanuma glanced up, a shiver tingling down his spine.

"What is it?" Motoki stopped cleaning the windows.

Asanuma rubbed his neck, massaging the goosebumps away. "Just cold, I guess."

Motoki knit his eyebrows but said nothing. The rag made _squeeg_ing noises as it chafed the glass.

"What are you planning to do about Dare, Toki?" Asanuma kept his eyes on the dirt pile he was sweeping up. He heard Motoki get down from the stepstool and move it over a few feet.

"What can I do about him?" said Motoki, polishing again. "He's a big boy, Asanuma."

Asanuma emptied the dustpan into the trashcan. "So are you. But don't you like peple to help you out when you have a problem?"

Motoki sighed. "You know Darien's different."

"How different?" said Asanuma. He closed the broom closet with a slam. "Don't you think he and Serena are mixed up in something?"

"Him, Serena and Lita," said Motoki. There was a note of sadness in his voice.

Asanuma looked down at his palms, and there was perspiration glimmering there, like a reminder of the crystal he knew he would wake up to find poking from his skin.

"Has anything…weird…been happening to you, Toki?" he said, not bothering to hide the strange tone of his voice.

"Strange like stalkers bursting into my arcade?" Motoki laughed wearily. "Sure."

"No, like…you. Have you felt different lately?"

"Apparently you have." Motoki stepped down from the stepstool. "What's going on, Numa?"

Asanuma sighed. "Nothing." Stupid of him to think it had been happening to Toki too.

L

Serena woke only two minutes into the flight, with a long, gasping breath and a convulsive jerk.

Jupiter jumped, her grip on Serena turning into a vice. Serena's trembling quickly loosened her grip again, but she held her close as she stared down at the wide, watering blue eyes.

"Serena?" she said, the one word quivering with hope and fear.

Serena stared back at her. One tear pulled suddenly free of her eye, and then a whole monsoon burst out, all racing down her face. Serena squeezed her eyes shut tight and made a small sound. She pulled away from Lita.

"Serena," said Lita. Horror blanched the tone she had meant to be soothing. She wrapped her arms again around Serena's resisting form and rocked back and forth on Helios's back. "Serena…what's wrong? Are you okay?"

Serena continued to shake, her back rigid against Jupiter. She did not speak but jammed her hands against her eyes, into her hair.

Eventually, her trembling ceased. But the silence did not. It silence grew heavier and heavier with each flap of Helios's wings. Jupiter could not bear it.

"You…want to sleep over at my house tonight?" she asked finally. She did not really expect an answer, but she hoped for one.

For a pregnant moment, Serena did not reply. Then she moved, sitting up out of her hunch.

"Thank you," she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. It sounded as though she were afraid to speak, as though she were letting only the smallest bit of sound escape her. For the umpteenth time that night, Jupiter felt fear trickle through her. "But I have to go home tonight. My parents are having a surprise birthday party."

Now horror cracked into Jupiter like a whip. _Oh my God_.

She had totally forgotten that today was Serena's birthday. Serena's sweet sixteen, and she'd been mind-raped by a mutant flower. Oh God. Oh God.

"Oh my God," she said at last. "Serena – I'm so sorry..."

"I'm the one who should be sorry," said Serena, and at last she was crying. Her shoulders shook, her words were torn like Kleenex into little shreds. "Lita…I've messed everything up…"

"Shhh…no, no you haven't!" Jupiter hugged the blonde to her, patting her back. "Serena, Kisenian possessed _you_. You didn't have any control over that!" She pulled away, looking down at her wet face. "And you didn't even do anything when you were under her control!"

Serena didn't look at Lita, she just kept shaking her head and crying. Jupiter bit her lip and hugged Serena to her again, but the blonde was stiffer this time, and she felt that she had closed herself off to her.

That was it. She wasn't letting Serena out of her sight.

"Can I come to this party tonight?" she said, because she knew no way would Serena hurt anyone's feelings by skipping a party they had thrown for her, no matter what the circumstances.

Serena swiped her face clean. Her eyes were still like puffy red mushrooms, her nose the same, but she smiled. "Of course."

It was a fake smile, but Jupiter wanted to keep it on her face. "So…got any hot cousins?"

L

Helios dropped them off at the corner without speaking – at least, to Lita. He murmured something in Serena's ear, but it looked to Lita as though the blonde cringed away. She resolved, for the umpteenth time that night, not to let Serena out of her sight.

Lita looked down at herself as they entered the front yard. She was wearing the same tank top and shorts over a swimsuit she'd worn to Serena's other birthday party. "Talk about a birthday suit," she said to Serena out of the corner of her mouth as she unlocked the front door.

Serena's reaction, if she had one, was lost in the din of "SURPRISE!" that burst out from the darkened living room. People popped up from behind every piece of furniture like shooting range targets, laughing and squealing.

Lita felt a surge of hatred for them, though, because there was a noticeable lull in enthusiasm for a moment, a split second of shocked silence that screamed "Oh my God, look at her scars!" They were Serena's aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, but they had not seen her since before the scars. It was not as though they reacted that way on purpose, it was just…it just happened.

Lita hated them even more, though, because of the huge smile Serena pasted on for them.

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed. "You guys! I had NO IDEA!"

Their shock gone, their certainty that Serena was still Serena restored, good-natured laughter rumbled throughout the room of family members at her fond teasing. Lita soon found herself aloen in a corner of the room as Serena was swallowed up by family members – none of whom, she noted, shared her height or hair color.

"Hey." A hand tugged at her shorts. She looked down.

"Buji!"

"So you still remember my name." Buji gave her a frown. "I guess you got selective amnesia when it came to sending out invitations to onee-chan's other birthday party."

Lita, unsure of whether to burst out laughing or drop to her knees and beg his royal highness's forgiveness, grimaced instead. "I don't think you would have enjoyed it much. It was a total teenager party. Kissing games and all that."

"Darien-baka let Onee-chan play a kissing game?" Buji's mouth was open wide.

"Well…" Lita smirked a little, thinking of how Darien had cleared his throat and it had magically been Cake Time. Then her smile faded, the image replaced by that of a crying Serena. "No."

"Hmph." Buji crossed his arm with an approving sound. He looked up at Lita with his sharp, brown-eyed gaze. "Was this party a kegger?"

Lita gave him a Look. "We'll pass over where you learned that word and settle for saying NO."

"Hmph," Buji said again, and looked around. "Where IS Darien-baka?"

Lita's stomach tightened. "I don't think he's coming."

"Some boyfriend," said Buji.

Lita patted his head, which caused him to scowl, but said nothing.

"You should go get some cake," he said. "It's really good. Onee-chan's mom is a way better cook than she is."

"I can see that," said Lita, looking pointedly at the frosting on Buji's cheek. "And how would you know how Serena's cooking is?"

"She made lunch for us, one time. At Darien-baka's apartment." Buji grinned. "Darien had to buy a new frying pan."

"She's not _that _bad," said Lita, a little absently. "I will go get some cake. What are you going to do?"

"Oh, play with the young whippersnappers," said Buji vaguely.

Lita gave him a weird look but moved away. It was Serena she was worried about.

L

When he could no longer hear Helios's gentle wingbeats, Darien crouched to the ground.

He did not allow himself to think about Serena. Did not allow himself. She was only unconscious. If he'd paid more attention to Fiore in the first place, instead of fixating so closely on Serena, Fiore might still be alive right now. If he'd believed in Fiore in the first place and not tried to interrogate him while Kisenian was still alive in his hand, Fiore would still be alive. If he, if he, if he, if he.

He shoved back the what-if's. The effort was like pushing the Great Wall of China back with his hands.

There was a slight pressure on the corner of his mind, and that was where Fiore's body lay. Brushing his hands across the rocky floor of the comet, he made his way toward that slight pressure he felt being exerted on the ground until his fingers touched feathery hair.

He touched the Golden Crystal and focused.

In Elysion, the hole in Fiore's chest was like a gaping mouth. Rage hammered at Darien, and when he felt Helios's presence materialize behind him, minutes or hours later, he clenched his teeth.

"Leave, Helios."

"P-P-Prince…" Helios's voice was barely audible. "My deepest apologies – "

"LEAVE, HELIOS!" he thundered.

Helios's presence vanished.

Darien dug his hand into his hair and stared down at the body. That was what it was now, just a body. No more. He dug his fist into his mouth. His mind waded through the swamp – Fiore had been possessed because Kisenian wanted him, Kisenian wanted him because she wanted to find the moon princess, Fiore died because he was possessed, Fiore died because of the moon princess, Fiore died because of him. What if this happened to Serena, too –

No! His fingers dug deeper into his scalp, and he stared down into Fiore's glazed eyes without seeing them. Fiore had been his first friend! The first person he had ever smiled with, ever laughed with – and he couldn't even devote a moment solely to him, couldn't even give him a single second of thought without thinking of Serena, what sortof friend was he? He hadn't been, he'd let Fiore die, even more than that, had believed him to have betrayed him so easily, no even more than that, he'd dismissed him as a figment of his imagination, another of those hallucinations!

And would he have these hallucinations – would he have had them ever – if not for the princess? The dreams of blood, the shadows trying to kill him, the mosters that came after he and his friends, all because of the princess. He hated her. He hated her.

The depths inside him stirred. That deep, dark place he went to when he lifted the ocean, when he sometimes used the crystal; the being within it stirred like a leviathan as his rage at the princess roiled its depths.

Darien gritted his teeth. Let out a breath.

"Helios," he said aloud. "Return, please."

The white unicorn materialized slowly, tentatively, before him. Darien looked at him this time, and saw that Fiore's bluish blood had dried and caked on Helios's golden horn.

"My deepest apologies, Darien-sama" said Helios, his head bowed low, low to the ground. "I should have found a different way…"

Darien motioned the unicorn closer, tearing the hem of his tuxedo shirt off. He used it to rub the blood from the horn.

Then he allowed the being deep inside to speak.

"You did what I would have done, Helios," it said through his mouth. Was it true? Would he have killed Fiore before allowing him to approach Serena?

The being used his fingers to beckon Helios closer and lay a hand atop his head. "The princess is most important. Most important."

Darien went rigid, and that was all it took to send the leviathan back to its depths. He floated down, away, but the power of his presence lingered like a scream echoing in a well.

"Endymion-sama."

"_What_, Helios?" Darien snapped, his head whipping up. He glared daggers into the unicorn's colorless eyes.

"Fiore, En- Darien-sama," Helios whispered.

Darien looked. Fiore's body had begun to disintegrate – breaking into red ptals that floated away.

"No," he said hoarsely. "No! Fiore!"

"Look, Darien-sama," said Helios softly.

"_No_," said Darien again, for he was looking, and in the spot where the hole in Fiore's chest had been, there was a single red, red rose.

"He quested to find you the most precious flower in the universe." Helios's wings whispered against each other as the unicorn took a step closer.

What Darien wanted to yell out was that he hated roses.

Instead, he said, "Where are Serena and Lita?"

Helios's feathers whispered again as he stepped back. "Apparently Serena-dono had a celebration to attend. Jupiter-san attended it with her."

Darien hissed. Damn damn DAMN! It was Serena's _birthday_… He buried his hand in his hair once more.

"Helios."

"Yes, Darien-sama."

"What happened while I was here? When Kisenian possessed Serena."

"She did not take any action, sire." A thoughtful tone colored Helios's voice that Darien found to be on the border of sacrilegious. They were speaking of Serena being _possessed._ There should be only horror in his voice, nothing but horror.

"The closest emotion I could compate Kisenian's reaction to would be…ecstasy," Helios continued. "She seemed on the verge of a discovery, just before you destroyed her."

Feeling Helios watching him closely, Darien looked up and met his stare. Helios seemed to take this as a cue to continue.

"You realize, Darien-sama, what this means," he said, taking a step forward. "You have singlehandedly killed ne of Chaos's right hand creatures, a Senshi slayer. Not to mention that you have physically entered Elysion – "

"I don't realize, and I don't care," said Darien sharply. He was being childish, and he didn't care. "When Kisenian possesses a person, they're aware of it."

Helios fumbled, clearly unsure if this was a question or a statement. "It…appeared so, Darien-sama. From how Fiore acted."

Darien stood abruptly. "I'm going." He glanced one last time at the red rose and left.

L

Uncle Mori had given her a giant Sailor Moon and Tuxedo Mask pillow set. They came up to her hip and were cuter than buttons.

But Serena had hidden them both in her closet, and now she was lying in her bed with her arms and legs wrapped around one of her pillows and her blankets up to her chin. It was sweltering, but she didn't want to pull the blankets down. As a child, the rule had always been that if the monster couldn't see you, it couldn't get you. Hence covering almost her whole self with blankets.

But the monster had not been outside this time. This monster had been inside her.

She dug her cheek deeper into the pillow. She had headphones on, playing bubbly pop music to keep the silence from totally prying her nerves away, but the sound didn't even make a dent in her anxiety. Sleep was as far from her as Finland.

Only three nights ago, she would have reached for the rope to soothe her to sleep.

She would never do that again.

She felt dirty. One time, very early in her Senshi career, soon after she had found Mercury, a youma had attacked a seedy bar. That had been an awkward situation in a lot of ways, but right after the youma had been dusted and the people began regaining reconsciousness, one of the men had pinched her bottom. She had felt violated, as though someone had reached inside her and scrambled their calloused, dirty fingernailed hands deep inside her, and it had taken months for that feeling to sink low enough that she didn't think about it everyday.

She felt like that again now. Dirty and open. Kisenian had wriggled under and into places inside her she hadn't even known existed. There wasn't a single part of her now that was hers, and hers alone. Every single cell, every single memory, thought, hope had been touched by Kisenian, had her fingerprints smearing them.

Every. Single. One.

On the floor beside her, Lita let out a long, rattling snore, and Serena jumped under her blanket. Then, realizing that it was only Lita, she smiled. The tall brunette had casually said something about not having any groceries at home, but Serena knew Lita was worried about her and didn't want to let her out of her sight. She was pretty obvious about things like that. Just like –

Another sound reached her ears suddenly – scratching. Serena froze under her blanket. Lita was still snoring peacefully. Her headphones continued to wail about blue-eyed boys. She had just imagined it –

_Scritch-scratch _– no she hadn't. Her heart froze along with her body this time. She had known it was too easy. Someone more powerful than Beryl being gotten rid of so easily, no, she'd come back –

The window squeaked. Night wind spilled inside and pulled at Serena's blanket, like fingers trying to pull it off. She'd told herself she wouldn't, that she didn't have the right to anymore after what she'd found out from Kisenian, but her fingers scrabbled for the rope, for Darien –

It was slack.

She bolted up in bed.

A shadow crouched on her windowsill. Two gold circles burned out of the blackness at her. Gold like moons glowing in the sky.

She had always, ever since they found out who he was, tried not to think about Darien's relationship to the moon princess. There had never been cause to think too hard about it; he had always spoken of the princess as an annoyance he would like to be rid of. It was difficult to reconcile Darien's irritation with the princess with Luna's portrayal of her as an angel with Serena's own confused thoughts as they all risked their lives for a princess they didn't even know. Despite all this confusion, one thing had seemed starkly certain: Darien did not even like the princess, much less love her.

But Serena had merged as completely with Kisenian's being as Kisenian had merged with hers, and Kisenian had known as well as 2 + 2 4 that the relationship between the Earth Prince and the Moon Princess had not been just a passing fling or even a simple love but the bond of soulmates. Serena had read novels about soulmates, watched movies about them, but the weight the word held in Kisenian's mind was so much heavier. It called for italics and bold letters in all caps and underlined, not just 'soulmates' but _**SOULMATES.**_

The prophecy that Helios had spoken of was in Kisenian's mind. Not all of it, but more of it. The Moon Princess was indeed the being prophecized as the only one with the potential to defeat Chaos. But the only chance she had of living through the encounter, the prophecy said, was if her _**SOULMATE**_, the bearer of the Golden Crystal, fought with her.

This information had universal implications. But to Serena, all that she could wrap her mind around was that Darien, no matter what he said now, had someone out there that he was going to find and love more than he'd ever loved anyone before.

And he was going to help her save the world.

And she, Serena…?

She would be here doing nothing just like she always did. Getting possessed. Having to be rescued.

Yet perhaps this was her chance to do something. Maybe the reason that they hadn't found the princess yet was because of Serena's bond with Darien. Maybe the strange rope was somehow blocking their soulmate bond. Maybe she was, as the suspicion had floated in Kisenian's mind, someone sent to keep Darien and the princess apart. Maybe she had amnesia, like Darien had; maybe she was somehow being possessed like Fiore had been; maybe she wasn't Serena Tsukino at all.

Maybe she was actually the enemy.

That was why now, as Tuxedo Mask crouched on her windowseat and stared at her with the eyes she knew he couldn't really see her with, she said, "You should go home."

He pulled back. The small movement let moonlight fall across his face so that it was not just shadow with golden circles glowing out of it.

Memory hit Serena. There was something she owed him.

"I…" Why was he looking at her like that? Why was he perched on her windowsill, wordless, like a bird of prey? He hated her. he must hate her; she had let Fiore die. "I'm sorry about Fiore."

It wasn't enough. It wasn't near enough, she knew. But this was something she had to get out, or it would haunt her for the rest of her life and keep her from keeping away from him to keep him safe. "You trusted me to save him, and I didn't do anything. I'm sorry."

She hugged her knees, staring determinedly at them and not him, and hoped that he would go away. He_ needed_ to go away.

But he took a step down off the windowseat, into her room. "Serena, that wasn't your fault – "

One of Lita's snores exploded suddenly into a mangled "Huah!" She bolted up in her nest of blankets, hair mussed but eyes alert. "Serena!"

Serena leaned down to pat Lita's hand and do something – reassure her, tell her to go back to sleep, she wasn't quite sure what – when she felt hands grab her waist and sling her into the familiar cradled position she knew so well. She opened her mouth to do something - yell, reproach, reassure, scream, she didn't know what – but Darien muffled her face in the blanket he'd grabbed her up in.

She stiffened to fight him, elbow him in the stomach, and that surprised her – and, if his replying rigidity was any indication, surprised him too – but then she felt them sailing through empty air, and she didn't dare. He was blind and leaping across rooftops – she felt a surge of anger at his risking both their lives like that – she was young and didn't want to die yet.

He leapt off the next building in a millisecond, too fast for her to make a move, but she tensed her muscles to be ready as soon as they touched down the next time. And when she felt his feet impact solid floor again, she bucked, twisting out of his grasp and landing in a roll on the ground that brought her back to her feet. Lita had taught her well. Except… she blinked her tangled, unbraided, unbunned hair out of her eyes and stared at the landscape around her.

Elysion. He had brought her to Elysion.

"Shields!" she shouted,whirling on him. The best first step to distance, she had decided during the long hours of sleeplessness, would be to address him the way she used to, by his last name. "You're going to give Lita a heart attack! She won't know we're here!"

"She knew it was me," said Darien, detransforming out of Tuxedo Mask. He _still _wore the swimming trunks and t-shirt from days before. There was reddish blood – his blood – on his shirt, surrounding neat little holes in the cloth. "She won't get that worried."

"She will, and you know it!" She had to stay angry, that was the best way to stay in control. Kisenian had been able to _impale _Darien through Fiore; what would someone be able to do to him with her tiara?

"Well, she won't be as worried as I am!" Darien shouted back. He took a quick, blurring step, and he was right in front of her. "What did Kisenian do to you?"

Serena forced herself to meet his eyes.

"I don't want to talk about that right now." And it was true, she didn't. She was still untangling everything from Kisenian in her own mind, trying to figure out what was new information and what was hers, and what all the new information meant. She couldn't share it, not right now. "Right now I want to go to sleep."

Darien gazed at her. Anger boiled on his features for a full minute before he finally spoke. "Fine." He held our his arms. "Come here, and I'll take you back."

He was self-conscious, and Serena knew that. She aimed at that tender spot. "Is it really necessary for you to hold me like that to take me back?"

Fire flared in his cheeks. He dropped his arms and grabbed her hand. She felt a warm sensation, like sunlight…

And then they stood on a rooftop again. Or rather, Darien stood. She was, for some reason, lying on the ground looking up at him…

Realization hit her.

"We just left my body here!"

He had moved a hand to steady her, but she scuttled backward from it like a crab, then scrambled hastily to her feet. She felt angry at him again, that he had been so furious with her that he'd actually gone so far as to take her to Elysion when he knew her body would be left behind –

"Serena, I forgot!" He was coming toward her again, and in her agitation she barely registered his words. "I go there physically now, I forgot that you wouldn't – "

"Stop." She threw a hand out in front of her, staring at him. "Just _stop_, Dari – Shields." She mentally beat herself for slipping up so soon. "I'm going home. _You_'re going home, too. You are not following me or camping out in my tree. Got it?"

She had planned to wait for an answer, but abruptly all her courage fled her, and she turned instead, jumping over the lip of the roof and transforming as she fell. Then she raced home, scrambling in through her window as though hell's hounds were at her heels.

Lita grabbed her shoulders she she came in. "You okay?"

"Fine." Sailor Moon panted as she detransformed. "Sorry about that."

Lita watched her. "What did he do?"

Serena glanced down at her as she crawled under her sheets. Her blanket, her beloved, decade-old bunny and moon blanket, she realized, was gone – in Elysion, probably, smothering some poor dream flowers. Another reason to be angry at Darien; she latched onto it like a drowning man to a lifesaver.

"Just talked," she told Lita. "I told him I was tired. And I am," she said, cutting off any questions Lita might have had.

Lita either got the message or hadn't planned on asking anything, anyway. She held up her blanket. "You can have this. It's too hot for it anyway."

There was a pink petal at the foot of her bed. It must have gotten under her blanket somehow while the petals were falling from the comet and been revealed now that her blanket was gone. She looked at it and felt a wave of nausea wash over her; a piece of Kisenian had been right next to her foot and she hadn't even known it.

"Um, actually," she said, swallowing back the bile in her throat and looking at Lita. "Could I sleep down there with you?"

L

This time Lita stayed awake until Serena's breathing finally smoothed into the steady, slow breaths of slumber. It didn't take that long, only about twenty minutes. But the little blonde twitched and tossed and let out little cries in her sleep.

Still…Lita crossed her arms, looking down at her friend. She had sat up and leaned her back against the bed to keep an eye on her.

Serena whimpered and curled into an even tighter ball. Lita leaned over awkwardly and rubbed her back. The last time she had seen Serena like this, Darien had been the one rubbing her back, murmuring to her. She tried to think of something soothing to murmur.

The rustle she heard behind detoured that train of thought. Her head snapped around.

"She's angry with me." Darien's voice was blank.

This was a bit of a conundrum. Lita didn't know exactly what Serena's sudden problem with Shields was, and _she_ was the one who usually gave him a hard time, but he looked so desolate…

"She got possessed by a flower," Lita said instead. "Cut her some slack, Shields." She turned back to Serena. "And cut yourself some, too."

She heard him walk closer, then he crouched down beside her. As if on cue, Serena let out a little hiss.

"Did she tell you what Kisenian did?"

"No!" Lita whipped around to face him. "What happened?

"Just that – I don't know." His fists were clenched. "She didn't tell you, then? Hate to say it, but that's a little relieving to hear."

Lita looked at him, then shook her head. "Yeah," she said and paused. "Look, I don't think she's mad at you, per se. It has something to do with Kisenian Blossom."

Shields shifted but didn't say anything.

They both watched Serena – or rather, in Shields's case, she supposed, listened to – for a few minutes. Not a single whole minute passed that she did not roll over, whimper, or flinch.

"How do you know?" said Shields abruptly.

"Huh?" She shook away the thoughts she had sunken into. "How do I know?"

"Yeah. What…evidence do you have to support the conclusion that her anger with me is caused by Kisenian?"

She smiled a little at how he sounded so much like a scientist conducting an experiment and an anxious little boy at the same time. "Has Serena ever been mad at you before?"

"Obviously you haven't heard the stories about the time she gored a hole in my foot."

"I meant since you two found out who each other were," said Lita dryly. She still found it a little unbelievable that the two had fought together for nearly a year and never realized their civilian identities.

"Well, yeah. That whole week before we fought Beryl. And the time – "

"And when she was mad at you, she didn't just push you away, did she?"

"Well…" Shields paused. "Not really. More like she argued with me, kept trying to win me over to her point of view with sometimes bizarre metaphors."

"Yeah," said Lita. "I've noticed that too. Serena doesn't give people the cold shoulder when she's mad at them. She tries to fix us. You thought she was mad at you. Has she tried to fix you?"

"No," said Shields. He reached a hand forward, hovering over Serena's cheek. "But in that case I'd rather she was angry with me."

"Yeah. I guess." Lita watched him move his hand away without touching her. Was that strange feeling she felt washing over her déjà vu? "How are you holding up? With Fiore and all."

Darien's face went smooth, as though ice had coated it. "Fine." He stood up. "I'll leave now. Serena'll have an aneurysm if she wakes up and I'm here."

He leapt to the tree branch. "Will you get Serena to come to the arcade tomorrow?"

Lita's grimace was not confident. "I can try."

"I'll be waiting." He leapt away.

L

Serena went down to breakfast early the next morning, determined to make up her long absences the past few days to her parents. They didn't say anything, but her mother gave her a hug as she handed her a plate of chocolate chip pancakes, her favorite breakfast food.

"How's your first day as a sixteen-year-old?" her father asked, passing her the butter.

"Too sunny!" Serena joked, shielding her eyes from the eight o'clock sun that streamed in the dining room windows.

They laughed, and then Lita came in, rubbing her eyes. "Too early for cheerfulness," she groaned, and that made them all laugh harder.

"Pancakes, Lita?" asked Ikuko.

"Yes, please." Lita smiled. She and Serena's mother had become kindred spirits, trading recipes.

"So, Serena," said Sammy, shooting a sly glance at their father. "I didn't see _Darien _at the party last night."

Serena's father's spewing of his coffee distracted everyone but Lita from Serena's reaction. That was enough time for Serena to school her face back into a big-sister-I'm-going-to-torture-you-little-bro expression.

"Well would you look at the time you're going to be late for work Kenji!" Ikuko hastily hauled Serena's faher up out of his chair by his lapel, planting a kiss on his lips and dragging him out of the room. "Have a good day work hard love you bye!"

They heard the front door shut.

"Way to give your dad a heart attack, Sammy," said Lita, smiling at him. "You trying to get his insurance policy or what?"

Sammy grinned. He had a crush on Lita, a fact Serena had not disclosed to her friend but that she was now mouthing behind Lita's back to Sammy that she would do so if he didn't behave. "Something like that."

"So, um, Serena," Lita began casually, as though they hadn't traveled into outer space on a talking, flying unicorn and Serena hadn't been possessed by an alien flower being yesterday. "Buji wanted to see you at the party last night, but he had to go home. He said he'd be at the arcade today, though, so I said we'd go see him."

"Buji?" Sammy interrupted. "Serena's _other _boyfriend?"

"The eight-year-old one." Lita drizzled syrup on her pancakes, watching Serena surreptitiously.

But Serena nodded. "Yeah, we can go. Just let me get dressed."

Whew. Lita mentally patted herself on the back. That had gone more easily than she'd expected…

L

Logic dictated that the best way for Serena to keep from endangering the princess's relationship with Darien and thus risking the fate of the whole universe was to keep away from Darien altogether. And she planned to do that. But she had to tell either him or Helios about the rest of the prophecy first, and since it would be too cowardly to tell Helios so he could tell Darien (and plus, she couldn't talk to Helios without the Golden Crystal), she had to go talk to Darien. The arcade seemed as good a place as any, especially since she would have Buji as an excuse to leave.

He was waiting for her in the corner booth where they had first talked with each other after finding out each others' identities. She knew he was waiting for her because, well, she just knew.

Sometimes realization blossoms slowly, unfurling so gradually that it takes years. Sometimes it bursts into bloom suddenly, exploding in color and perfume. And sometimes it never blossoms at all. Sometimes it is crushed before it gets a chance to bloom.

Serena felt a wet little trickle below her collarbone. She swiped at it, dismissing it as a trickle of sweat, but what it really was was the nectar seeping from that crushed bud.

Darien held up a paper grocery bag as she approached.

"Your blanket," he said, his voice unreadable.

Serena took the bag, staring at him. Her eyes darted toward the counter. Lita merely lifted her brows at her.

She took a deep breath.

"I'm not going to eat you." Darien's voice was bland.

She sat down. "There's something you need to know."

Darien did not move from his ramrod straight sitting position, but she felt as though he had leaned forward.

His first friend was dead. She didn't have to do this – tell him. She could keep the prophecy to herself. She didn't have to tell him.

No. She did. She did have to. Because if she was, by some small, infinitesimal chance here, on this planet, in this galaxy, to harm Darien, she had to change that NOW.

She told him. Spilled it out like a sack of stolen jewels: that she hadn't existed a thousand years ago with everyone else as a Senshi, how he was the moon princess's SOULMATE, the rest of the prophecy. That without him, the moon princess would die in the fight against Chaos.

He stared at her, with his sightless but penetrating eyes after she finished, and his napkin was crumpled like a dead bouquet in his hand.

Somewhere, deep inside her where she did not acknowledge consciousness, Serena had hoped for – no, _expected_ – comfort. For Darien to say, no, of course none of that bull could be true, it's absurd, in his logical, sarcastic way, and give her a whole parade of reasons why it was dumb.

Instead, he sat there like a statue, and not for her life could Serena tell what he was thinking. Nor dared she even brush the rope. It was not her right. Not her right at all.

"Hey." Lita had been conquered by her curiosity at last. She leaned a hand on the tabletop between them. "What's up?"

Serena looked at Darien. Her lips parted, but she did not want to ask the question.

Darien jerked his head. "You can tell her." He stood up, his cane hitting the chair of the neighboring table. "I'm going to go. Talk to Helios."

Serena made to speak again, but courage failed her, as it had last night, like a tide retreating at the last moment.

Lita slid into the seat he had vacated and regarded Serena intently. "What's wrong?" she asked quietly.

Serena tore her eyes from Darien's back and made them meet Lita's.

"Nothing," she said quietly, shaking her head. She didn't want Lita to know she hadn't been in the past. Because if more people knew about it, the truer it felt, and if it was true, then maybe she really was working for the other side.

She realized that a whole minute had passed and she was still shaking her head. She stilled herself and said again, "Nothing. It wasn't anything."

L

"Something's wrong."

Motoki tore his eyes from Lita and Serena to look at Asanuma, who was now looking at him. The blonde boy, like Motoki himself, had been watching the tense group in the corner booth.

"You think?" he said, but his sarcasm was wilted like a flower. He sighed and rubbed at his watch. A spark leapt out, then another. He clapped his hand over it, his eyes flicking up like a hunted animal's.

"Something _has_ been happening to you!" Asanuam stared at him. He leaned forward. "You've felt it, too! Haven't you?"

Motoki stared at Asanuma, his jaw slack. Asanuma too…?

"They've been hiding something from us." Asanuma leaned forward, his voice low. He cupped his hand and opened it.

Motoki stared at the shard of crystal that was suddenly sticking out of Asanuma's calloused palm. His eyes moved up to Asanuma's.

"But we're part of it now." Asanuma closed his palm. He did not release Motoki's gaze.

Motoki touched his palm to Asanuma's closed fist. He watched the hair shoot up along Asanuma's arm as the electricity traveled up it.

Their eyes met. Eagerness burned in Asanuma's face, anxiety in Motoki's. They were part of something now, alright – but what was it?

(To be continued)


End file.
